Programme Sekoly: Antahovary Primary School

Construction activities at Antahovary Primary School have advanced rapidly over the past quarter, with completion anticipated in September. The three-classroom school building, which also includes teacher accommodation, is nearly finished. Remaining work includes rendering the walls, installing windows and doors, and assembling student and teacher furniture.

Both latrine blocks are also close to completion, requiring only final wall rendering and tiling of the menstrual hygiene management (MHM) facility. Once the classrooms and latrines are complete, the team will carry out the finishing paintwork.

In addition to construction, WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) education remains a key component of this project. As sessions could not be completed prior to the June school holidays, these will resume in September 2025 to ensure that students and teachers are equipped with vital knowledge and skills to support long-term health and hygiene.

Key achievements this quarter include:

• The school building’s walls were completed to full height and a cyclone-resistant roof successfully installed.
• Both latrine blocks were built to full height with roofing in place.
• A 10,000-litre rainwater harvesting system with drinking and handwashing stations was installed, improving sustainable access to safe water.

Thanks to your generous support, Antahovary Primary School is now in its final stages of construction. Soon, children will benefit from a safe, cyclone-resilient learning environment, improved sanitation facilities, and reliable access to clean water.

Construction activities at Antahovary Primary School are underway, with full project delivery currently expected in July 2025, two months later than initially anticipated. This delay primarily results from severe weather conditions that occurred at the end of 2024 and continued into the first months of 2025.

Construction of the school’s three new classrooms has progressed steadily. The foundation has been completely dug out and filled with concrete, including interwoven layers of annealing wire for additional structural support. The team has been focusing on constructing concrete breezeblocks and has now raised the walls of the school building to just below roof level. Once the walls are complete, technicians will shift towards constructing concrete reinforcements and beltings around the tops of the walls to prepare for installing the cyclone-resistant roof.

Teachers’ capacity to report to school without fail and on time has shown to be associated with the distance between their home and work, making the provision of quality on-site accommodation a key strategy for increasing teacher attendance. As a result, an on-site teacher accommodation is also under construction, attached to the three-classroom school building.

To improve access to safe sanitation for the 150 students and five teachers, SEED has begun constructing five gender-segregated VIP latrines and one MHM facility. Both latrine pits have been completely dug out. The construction team has laid both pits, erected the pit walls with concrete breezeblocks, and installed improved structural supports throughout. Additionally, the team has recently raised the above-ground walls of both latrine blocks to roof height and installed the wooden support beam for the roof. With this milestone complete, technicians are currently focusing on installing the tin roof, after which, they can begin rendering the walls.

Our generous donors have made all this progress possible and we are very grateful.