By Markus Faigle | Volunteer Project Director
Some of you reading our project reports over the years may remember that Zahana always believed that planting trees and educating children may take years to bear fruit and we need to commit for the long haul. This is a project report we write with great pride and joy.
Some of you may remember that in 2011 we passed one of the most important milestones in our schools' history. Seven student successfully passed the CEPE, or Certificat d'etudes primaires élémentaires (Certificate of Primary Studies) a nationwide test after completing primary school. (More about this on our website.) These seven were the first students ever to pass a CEPE in their community.
Two of our students, Donné and Doré contiued their education and went to secondary school in the neighboring small town of Bevato. Completing secondary school with flying colors, they also successfully passed the entrance exam for high school in June 2015. Since then they have been living in the town of Tsiroanomandidy attending an agricultural school.
This amazing personal achievement was only possible with the financial support of people like you. They are indeed the first ones in their community to go way beyond primary school.
The town of Tsiroanomandidy and their agricultural school is only a few hours walk from their home village of Fiadanana. So they had been returning, sometimes over the weekend, back home.
A new generation of students, attending their former school in Fiadanana, had been asking to learn how to grow vegetables in their school gardens. With our gardeners working full time on the reforestation project and their own rice fields, they were not as available as a few years back to work with our students.
In a match made in heaven, Donné and Doré offered to teach the 'new' students of their alma mater how to grow vegetables, putting their newly acquired knowledge into practice in the same school garden that got them going over ten years back.
Full circle indeed.
Best regards,
Dr. Ihanta, Jeannette and Markus
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
