By Markus Faigle | Volunteer Project Director
International women’s day is a big deal in Madagascar. Over the years it has also been celebrated in our villages, as a welcome occasion to get together and dance. (See our website.)
When our site visit team inquired with a leader of the women’s group on how they plan to celebrate international women’s day 2018 she replied: “of course we go out with the school children and planted trees, as we have always done on this day“. (With this look, a bit, ‘Why do you ask?”)
Every year it is still wonderful and very encouraging to us, that reforestation has become their “normal” thing to do, to celebrate International Women’s Day. The best proof that an innovation has become mainstream is when it becomes “the normal thing to do”. When, in this case without a site visit by the team from the capital or encouragement from outsiders, people plant trees because this is what they always did, then a paradigm shift has taken root in the community and they own it.
All we have to do is to sit back and be happy. We know all too well that in 2005, when we started our work, nobody had reforestation on their mind to celebrate anything. We have the pictures (and hopefully a forest one day) to prove it.
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