A community school for all (children) in Fiarenana

“The spirit of a family garden in Fiadanana came back” was the comment of our founder Dr. Ihanta, when she forwarded the photos in this report.

Sometimes you just have to wait a decade until people come around. Really?  Yes, really.

As you can see on our website, in 2013 people planted vegetable gardens next to the houses in Fiadanana, our first village.  We originally thought it is a no brainer to have a garden right next to your kitchen, that supplies you with fresh vegetables as close to your cooking pot as possible. Ihanta had bought little vegetable seed packages and Bary our new gardener distributed them among the people interested. It worked really well and the vegetables grew happily. But then the idea fell asleep and for reasons unclear to us, people stopped growing vegetables next to their houses.

Now the vegetable gardens are back. We are not sure yet if there is a correlation between the huge and beautiful school gardens, thanks to Donné, that blossomed during the pandemic lockdown. Or it could be Donné’s persistent teaching by example by introducing new crops, showing that onions and carrots do indeed grow in their soil, despite the poluar believe to the contrary. Whatever the reason, we are happy that the spirit of a family garden in Fiadanana came back.

And they send us the pictures to delight us.

A while ago we got this rather dark and a bit blurry picture of some of our students. It took a while to get it at all, and we only got it by special request via our midwife, not the teachers. When we asked if we might get a better picture her response was: “They didn’t really want to pose in the daytime”, why becomes clear soon…

Not all project reports focus on success. This is one of them. In this (reluctant) picture you see are all our Zahana students who took the CEPE, (see website), the national primary school exam in 2021. Last year, in our October 6, 2020 project report 11 students took the CEPE test and all but one passed.

Much to the embarrassment of our head teacher this year the fortunes were reversed. 12 students took the test and one passed. He considered it a personal failure, and didn’t even want to talk about it (hence the lack of photos, because last year he took two dozen). To make matters worse only one student of our sister school in Fiarenana took the test and passed, therefore achieving a 100% success rate.

We tried to point out to him, that if the school is closed for 10 months of the year due to COVID-19 prevention restrictions, he could not automatically expect the same result as the year before. Not to mention the compounding factor, that in late 2020 the Ministry of education decided not to administer the CEPE as a nationwide test anymore and then reversed the decision. Consequently, giving him less than two months to prepare his best students by cramming in a 12 months curriculum - and it did not yield the results he had hoped for.

We guess this is another example how the pandemic can indeed affect people lives in rural Madagascar in more ways than one.

Monthly donors - the sweet smell of holiday candy

Thank you to all of Zahana’s current monthly donors!

Here is a sweet deal: GlobalGiving’s monthly donor drive from Dec 13 to 17.

Every monthly donation pledged in this week will be matched 200% in April 2022. This means you donate for 12 months, but Zahana actually get 14 months out of the year 2022.  How sweet is this candy cane, buy 12 get 14?*

Monthly donors, people who give a small amount every month, have become the backbone of our work in Madagascar. It gives us a reliable source of donations every month. It allows us to plan or budget for ongoing expenses e.g. salaries for our teachers and gardeners.  

Monthly donations frees us from the stress of having to raise our budget for 2022 in the month of December. Traditionally, in the USA over 80% of donations are made in December. Just imagine: you might get one big paycheck in December and had to make it last all year long. Plus, you don’t really know what this paycheck may look like until Dec 31, the big tax-day for end-of-the-year donations. Plus, if some other emergency (or a pandemic) gets all the attention in December, we at Zahana might just fall through the proverbial cracks.

Please consider becoming a monthly donor for Zahana from Dec 13 to 17. Thank you.

*Monthly donations are capped at $200 per month, and have to be actually made for 4 months to qualify, to avoid shenanigans

Links:

• Cause for a celebration: The first school diplomas ever!!
• 2020: The CEPE once again in our village's school