Economic Growth Madagascar Project #4497

A dedicated micro credit fund for rural Madagascar

by Zahana

Project Report | Dec 27, 2012
Outreach beyond our own community

By Markus Faigle | Volunteer Project Director

Edible Moringa leaves

Zahana has always tried to do outreach to neighboring communities. Planting Moringa trees has been successful for us, thanks to our gardeners. We have done this, (see website), not only because Moringa are fast growing trees, but their leaves, flowers and seed pods are highly nutritious. We plan to plant many more Moringa trees, something we jokingly call our Moringa forests. Originally we started with 1 kg gram of seeds we acquired from the Minister of Agroforestry.

During our site visit in December 2012 a bolder idea emerged: The next time we will buy more Moringa seeds and distribute it to schools in neighboring villages as well. It is our hope, that the teachers will plant the seeds with their students and grow Moringa trees in their school yards. We will offer to the teachers, that our gardeners will come and visit their village and work with the students on their gardening activities. This is a rather innovative project, because currently only Zahana’s schools have school gardens. Many people have told us that in the 1960s, after independence from France, they had school gardens and growing food was part of their curriculum. It is a rather small investment of time and money to plant a seed that may grow huge benefits of good will and improved nutrition.

We hope in case you are in the fortunate position of making end-of-year giving decisions, you may considers Zahana in Madagascar as well. And, if you have already done so, thank you very much for your support. We have currently half a dozen projects with GlobalGiving that make online donations a breeze. While there are very nice ways and euphemisms out there to talk about donations, the bottom line still is that without your support, now for the seventh year, our work in Madagascar would not be possible.

Happy 2013!

Ihanta, Jeannette and Markus

Moringa growing in the schoolyard

Links:

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Sep 19, 2012
Growing coffee plants

By Markus Faigle | Volunteer Poject Director

The coffee seedling that grew it into a tree

It has been over three years since we hired our master gardener in the second village of Fiarenana. Since then he has achieved amazing results, e.g. with the school gardens and the potatoes. But sometimes the lessons learned can be more challenging. One of his very first projects was to successfully grow over 2000 coffee seedlings. We had worked with the Ministry of Agriculture to obtain the best seeds suitable for the area, bought the recommended seeds and took them to the village to our master gardener.

This was also our first long-term microcredit idea for that village. It takes at least 3 to 4 years for coffee to produce fruit, or coffee cherries. After processing and roasting, these coffee beans ultimately provide homegrown coffee. This idea was inspired by the fact, that the village already grew enough coffee for their own consumption, in contrast to all of the villages in the area. Planting additional coffee trees could produce a surplus that we intended to become a cash crop for the villagers as they could sell the additional coffee locally.

So the gardener gave away 1850 coffee seedlings in his own village, plus 150 to the neighboring village of Fiadanana. It takes time for plants to grow. So we waited.

A few months back we started inquiring about the fate of the coffee plants. Very much in keeping with Malagasy tradition, their response was polite silence. So we asked again, and met polite silence again. During one of our site visits, our founder suggested: "why don't you take me to the coffee plants?" Our gardener politely complied, and showed us the great coffee plants in the photo, growing extremely well. We asked about the other coffee plants. After some probing, he admitted, that the other plants didn't make it, which is very embarrassing for him. Years ago, during his formal training, he had been taught to plant coffee plants in full sun, and that was the advice he passed on. As it so happened, only he, the gardener himself, did not have any land with full sun, and was forced to plant his share of seedlings in the shade. And his plants grew beautifully. But since he was the master gardener, and the only one with surviving coffee plants, he was too embarrassed to talk about it, and resorted to polite silence, when asked about the success of the coffee seedlings.

Once again, our lesson learned is: expert advice, from somebody living far away, needs to be taken with a big grain of salt. And it puts a completely new meaning to the term “shade grown coffee”.

The first coffee seedlings way back in 2009

The "old" coffee plantation that inspired us

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Jun 12, 2012
A video about building a school - the communiy way

By Markus Faigle | Volunteer Project Director

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