Save Tsagnoria School

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the school repairs at Tsagnoria School. Through your donations and the help of the Swiss Embassy, Azafady has provided the students at Tsagnoria with a repaired classroom and latrine, as well as brand new benches for the students to sit on.

Before the project the classroom was in such a state of disrepair that it had become unusable. The roof was hanging dangerously over the students’ heads, the majority of the students had to study on the floor, and the constant leaks caused classes to be cancelled and schoolbooks to be destroyed. There latrines were also in a bad state of repair, with little privacy due to holes in the walls.

Now, thanks to the repairs that your donations have provided, the students can learn in a safe and comfortable environment. Lessons will now be able to take place during bad weather and school books can be stored without being damaged or destroyed by leaks. The new furniture includes 40 benches, tables and chairs for teachers, plus cupboards and bookcases. Students no longer have to study on the floor and the school’s resources will be kept safe. The new latrine will also be able to provide privacy and security to students and encourage them not to defecate in nearby bushes, improving hygiene, attendance and the local environment.  Azafady’s Community Health team will support this by leading WASH education sessions, encouraging latrine use, hand washing and drinking clean water.

The headmaster, Patrice, said that he has wanted a new school for a long time, ever since the school became too wet to use; with no benches and a broken school the children could not do anything. Student Ania, aged 7, said that she will be pleased when the new school is finished and is happy to be going back to school.

Links:

• Find out more about Sekoly, the umbrella project for Tsagnoria
• We start work on Manambaro school soon

Thank you again for everyone who contributed to save this school - your help will ensure that the children of Tsagnoria have a safe and happy atmosphere in which to study for their future.

Our team on the ground now have a work schedule in place, have sourced materials, and are ready to commence the renovation on the 11th July with completion in early August.

We have a group of enthusiastic volunteers eager to get started! Work will include; fitting a new roof, windows and doors; building a partition wall between the two classrooms; providing 40 new desks and benches and a blackboard; and repairing the school’s latrine block. These activities will create a safe and positive learning environment in which all students will have a desk to work at, and different classes will have separate classrooms to learn in. For more information see the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_kIoOROtQ.

If you would like to keep up to date on this, and all of Azafady’s other projects in Madagascar, check us out on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AzafadyMadagascar, or on Twitter - https://twitter.com/azafady.

If you are feeling adventurous come and join us in Madagascar, and you could be working on another school project on this extraordinary island - http://madagascar.co.uk/get-involved.

Thank you to all of you who have contributed to the Tsagnoria school project over the past two years. We are very happy to announce, that along with your donations and funding obtained from the Swiss Embassy in Antananarivo, we now have all the required funds to get the refurbishment underway. We could never have achieved this without your support!

We will keep you all updated with the progress of this project, and for the moment the work is scheduled to be started this coming summer.

Thank you all again for your continued support of both Tsagnoria School and Azafady.

Best wishes from all of us in the UK and Madagascar. 

We at Azafady are working towards the final push of funding for the refurbishment of Tsagnoria school. Following the last report, where Tegan had visited the school with some volunteers during her time in Madagascar, there has been some fundraising going on.

Bethan George, who went to visit what is left of Tsagnoria school, was so moved by what she had seen that she decided to fundraise for the school project upon her return from Madagascar.

"The reason why I wanted to help was because I was inspired by what I saw with my own eyes in Madagascar, the necessity for these projects to help such gracious people, and how much these projects have helped the communities. I am passionate about human development and my studies in Geography at university have guided my knowledge about the correct way to sustainably help poverty stricken communities and with this, I can see that Azafady is an extremely responsible charity which undertakes development projects in the correct way, involving the community to produce  sustainable benefits suitable to their lives! I used business contacts starting with close family and asking them to send the links out to any colleagues or friends (with a brief passionate description of my reason for wanting funding) that may be willing to help!"

Thank you to Bethan for all her hard work - she is also continuing with a further fundraising event over Christmas.

We are working extremely hard to get this project funded by the end of the year.

Our team in Madagascar have been working hard to finalise the budget for the project, as the original one was compiled over two years ago now, to ensure that any additional costs are incorporated and that the further deterioration of the building has been considered in all the construction plans. 

Another returned volunteer Roxanne Rahnama has been working hard on a photo essay following her visit to Tsagnoria school. Her essay excellently illustrates issues in Madagascar and her selection of photos with captions from Tsagnoria are very powerful. She also won a photo prize for a submission that she took in Madagascar and has kindly donated her winnings to Azafady. We at Azafady love the photo and accompanying caption: "A woman brushes her teeth at sunrise using water from a lake where other villagers also bath in, wash their clothing and often openly defecate in. The sun, or as the Malagasy call it, "the eye of the sky," gives an early morning lens into a larger urban sanitation and health crisis in Fort Dauphin"

See Roxanne's photo essay here: http://blumcenter.berkeley.edu/news-posts/children-of-madagascar/

To be held in London next week, Eve and Tegan have organised a music fundraising event featuring talented Malagasy musician “Nogabe” with all funds going to the Tsagnoria school project. We hope this will be a successful and enjoyable evening, please join us!

https://www.facebook.com/events/721688087911141/

Thank you once again to all the funders of this project so far, and we look forward to updating you with the fantasctic news that the school refurbishment is funded very soon!

Links:

• Link to our school building project "Sekoly"

I recently went out to Madagascar on a field visit, and during my time out in the rural areas, I had the opportunity to walk up to Tsagnoria village to see the school site.

We visited on market day, however to get to the main village we had a further walk and had to cross a river. Unfortunately the bridge is now too damaged to use so you have to wade through the water. Many people were doing so whilst carrying pots and planks of wood. Once the other side, we approached the school building through the village and were able to straight away see the state of disrepair. We were informed by someone living in the village that it was now too dangerous to teach there. And I could see why; the ceiling was not secure at all, and everything inside was rotting and moulding due to water damage from heavy rain.

The school was opened in 1967, and we met a pupil Gilette who studied there all those years ago and still now lives in the village. She shared her memories of the inaugeration with us, apparently there were lots of dignatories who visited the village!

A very sad thing for me, a person who loves reading and writing, was to see all the discarded and again moulded books, which are just unable to be protected from the severe and wet weather conditions. Paper covered the floor, and every page showed me a lost opportunity for learning.

Outside of the building on the grass that surrounds the school, is a broken well and a delapidated teacher's house which also needs to be repaired. A latrine block which was built by Azafady in 2006, needs some structural work doing so that it is useable again.

After we had seen the school site, we were taken to where pupils are currently learning, a small church in the village. Unfortunately the fact that the lessons are held in a religious building is inhibiting the attendance of children whose families hold traditional spiritual beliefs.There are currently 72 children aged from 7-16 being taught there, but there are at least 50 more children who are not currently receiving any education. There is one teacher for the school, who accasionally has a voluntary assistant to help in class. The church has no desks and only a few small benches, which the children use to write on whilst sitting on the floor. The room is very dark and would also not be very weather proof in a storm. Needless to say this is not an ideal learning environment, but at the moment there is no other option for the teacher and pupils.

On a positive note it was uplifting to hear that the teacher of the school is very enthusiastic and we look forward to seeing him teach in the refurbished school building when this is completed. 

I am very glad to have been able to personally visit Tsagnoria and to see the school site. I am determined to work to get this refurbishment fully funded, as I have now seen for myself what a difference this will make for many young people who are either not currently attending school or having a limited education due to the facilities and resources available.

Thank you to everyone who has supported this project, and those who are regularly donating to the school fund. If you have any friends who may be willing to donate to this project, please do share the link with them. I can honestly say that the money is going to a school in a community which greatly needs somewhere for the children to learn.