By Markus Faigle | Volunteer Project Director
Zahana's 10th anniversary was an excellent reason for festivities in the village and an opportunity to celebrate our achievements with the community.
The school they built in 2006 to house students is now in its 10th year. Some of our first students are now parents. Two of them attend agricultural school. The students had their own celebration at their school to show its importance in the village.
The communal water system is running continuously, providing clean safe drinking water for over a 1000 people. This fact alone is amazing. It shows or even proves that our participatory approach really works. It is a sad fact that most development built water systems don't function longer than two years, as pointed out in an excellent TED Talk. But if a community comes together and tackles their own issues, a water system can run continuously for over a decade.
Our reforestation project is by now ‘just’ half a decade old, and a ‘youngling’. It is the most visible of all projects and considered by most in the village to be our biggest success (after water and schooling, which is taken for granted already). We recently celebrated “the most trees planted”, which was covered in detail in another project report.
As usual at such events, there were speeches and traditional dances. Especially our teacher enjoyed the opportunity of having a microphone and therefore the undivided attention of the entire community. (Although we were told that many wished there might've been a stricter time limit on the length of speeches...)
For the 10th Year celebration we had been joined by other important health professionals. You see all of them in the photo 6 with the numbers.
1- Dr. Shila, MD
2- Dr. Roccali, MD, Director of Regional Health.
3- Dr. Marguerite, Cardiologist, Zahana founding board member.
4- Dr. Claudine, MD, Office of the Director General of Health
5- "Santa", Office of the Director General of Health and big Zahana supporter who ‘adopted’ the villages
6- Medical Inspector for Tsiroanomandidy (the next town)
7- Patric, Driver, Office of the Director General of Health
8- Theo, Janitor
9- Dr. Ramihantaniarivo, MD, Founder of Zahana and Director General of Health (taking the photo)
You may notice that Theo the janitor has joined the team. This speaks for the uniqueness of the Zahana's approach, since it is in no way 'usual' to give a janitor the opportunity to join a site visit, or the driver to leave the car and join the festivities.
No celebration is complete without a feast, and in one of the pictures you can see a large amount of carrot salad being prepared. Since carrots are not grown in the village, and were brought in by the visiting team, carrots in themselves are quite a special treat.
But now to another celebration: GlobalGiving is offering a 50% match on donations made on GivingTuesday Nov. 29. This time GlobalGiving will match until the donations have reached 1 million dollars an amount that far exceeds all prior matching days. If you feel inclined to give to our project, please consider to do so on November 29 and you give 50% more! (Please keep in mind Nov 29 means midnight to midnight EST, where GlobalGiving is based).
Ihanta and Markus
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