Planting 15000 trees in Madagascar

The end of June (2015) we got very exciting news: Donné and Doré had both been admitted to take the BEPC a nation-wide high school entrance exam (Brevet d'Etude du Premier Cycle).

Some of you may remember Donné and Doré, who had been living for past few years in the small town of Bevato attending secondary school (after they were the among our first students who passed their CEPE in our school in 2011).

Over three days (August 3-5) they took the BREC in the town of Tsiroanomandidy. Their very proud parents and Zahana’s ‘Santa’ accompanied them to the town from their home in Fiadanana.

For over a week everybody waited for the official results to be released. With great pride we can post this August 15 update from Zahana:

“Our brave country boys passed their exam! They are among the 51% in the entire region of Tsiroanomandidy who successfully passed their BEPC. I’m really happy and we will celebrate with them. Supported by Zahana they will be living in Tsiroanomandidy for the next few years and attend high school there. There is no better tenth anniversary gift for Zahana. Back in October 2005, when Raleva our traditional healer donated the land to built our community school nobody even dreamed of such a wonderful result for two of our students. They are the first in their community to ever attend high school”

*Explanatory note: Tsiroanomandidy is the next (and only) bigger town in the area. Tsiroanomandidy can be reached via a paved road from the capital (a four hour’s drive) and has such amenities as a hospital, electricity and a high school. It takes about four to five hours to walk from their village of Fiadanana to Tsiroanomandidy.

Here is a report direclty from the filed after a site visit in June: "All photos of the trees the community planted we sent are from Fiadanana and Fiarenana. People are very enthusiastic about the reforestation in both communities and very proudly show off the growing trees. The best assessment we can make is that all projects have been successful and that neither drought not brushfires have endangered our reforestation efforts.

You may recognize Jean our gardener from Fiarenana in some of the pictures where he shows us the tree plantings undertaken by him and the community (e.g. International Women's Day). If you look at the trees you might recognize some of the seedlings from pictures we sent over the last few years."

Best regards,

Dr. Ihanta and Markus

Links:

• Planting ironwood trees in 2012
• Reforestation assessment in 2013