A community school for all (children) in Fiarenana

As a comment from us: It is always a good sign, when the reports from the schools are uneventful and children ‘just’ can go the school every day and learn (and eat). Here is a quick end of the year review we got from Madagascar:

Current Students enrollment in Zahana’s schools:

• Fiarenana: 46 (basically every child of school age)
• Fiadanana: 81

At Zahana’s school our head teacher Mparany, based on your recommendation, does not to accept children under 5 of age at our school anymore (in his single classroom). This has worked out very well for him, since he can now focus on teaching instead of childcare for little ones. The public school in Fiadanana also now also finally open and this way more children can go to this school as well, which is very good for us. The solar cookers in the schools are working all day.

In other important community news: the Health Center for Fiadanana is almost finished (see the groundbreaking in July). We just got this photo of an almost completed building, with our traditional healer Raleva checking out its progress.

Zahana’s head teacher, “Paran” (phonetically spelled) has been with us now for almost 7 years.

Malagasy names are very long and full of meaning. Here is a short explanation from our team in Madagascar: the name of the teacher: RANDRIANAMELASOA Andriamparany fits to his job: ‘andrianamelasoa’ means 'the one living good things'. and ‘andriamparany’ means 'the last in the sibling', but as I know he has  younger brothers and sisters; it was maybe the plan of his parents at the time that he might be the youngest of their children, when they gave him his name.

Paran was the first teacher Zahana successfully hired for the newly built school in Fiadanana in 2006. Trained as a primary school teacher, he moved there from another area.  He took part in the intensive one month long training in the village, to prepare them (see website) to teach in an environment where there had never been a school before.

Since then he has become an indispensable community leader, who put down roots in the village, starting his family. He is currently the director of the Zahana school program, supervising and training our teacher in the other village and our two teacher’s assistants.  Has also taken a leadership role in solar cooking with the students. In collaboration with our gardener he has successfully grown many vegetables with the students that greatly enrich their school food.

We also feel it is important to point out, that our children go to school six days a week and our teacher only have Sunday off. Since our children want to go and to spend time in school, being their teacher is an all day affair, except for the month of July when the school is officially closed for summer break. Despite his work schedule as a teacher, Paran has been able to plant so many trees over the years that he was nominated for the third place, having planted the most trees in his community in our reforestation efforts. He was honored with an award for his efforts during the visit of the Minister of Health to Zahana’s villages earlier this year.

Links:

• Training the Zahana teachers
• Building Fiadanana's school