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Zahana: Rural Transformation through Participatory Development in Madagascar

THANK YOU for your support for Earth Day!

We are very happy, proud and thankful to announce that Zahana was selected to for the GlobalGiving April Newsletter! This Earth Day issue featured our reforestation project: Planting 15,000 trees around our villages in Madagascar. This is wonderful for us, not only does it give a major boost to our reforestation efforts, but it also helps out project reach and audience we could never reach on our own. Thank you GlobalGiving and thank you to all of our donors, new and old out there!

• Planting 15,000 trees
• Jean, Zahana's Master Gardener
• Bary, the second gardener
• March 2013: Women planting more trees
• Growing seedlings for the community
• Planting trees in the schoolyard
• Planting Moringa Olifera
• 2012 Communal Tree Planting
• New forest next to the schools

Zahana issues with our village partners are interconnected, three example, that hopefully will make you curious:

Planting a school garden is agricultural education, science curriculum and tackling the need for school lunches (or food security) at the same time.

Introducing new edible trees or crops, such as Moringa oleifera in March 2010, combines the need for firewood, improved nutrition and microcredit.

Planting trees and introducing improved cookstoves and solar cookers addresses deforestation, public health and climate change.

By the same token trees need years to grow and many projects need time to show lasting result. A constant challenge in the 20-second sound byte era (the video below for the visual learners). We hope you may spend some time exploring our site's many links further. Thank you.

Zahana's YouTube channel: click here

Access to clean, safe water was the first priority for the community of Fiadanana in working with Zahana. The current running clean and safe water system in their village was built collaborative. 2.5 km long from the mountain to the village, it provides clean safe drinking water for over 1000 people. Learn more

ZAHANA is a community benefit organization in Madagascar. Zahana is dedicated to participatory rural development, education, reforestation, revitalization of traditional Malagasy medicine, and sustainable and environmentally-friendly agriculture. The goal of Zahana is to develop a community-based rural development project focused on priorities set by the villagers themselves. It is Zahana’s philosophy that development must be based on local needs and solutions proposed by local people. It is important to start small and stay focused on local priorities rather than on agendas set somewhere else by national or international bodies.

Zahanas activities are ongoing. We started working in Fiadanana in 2005, assisting the community to build their communal water system (link). Zahana attempts to address all issues vital for a community development, an approach we call 'integrative development'. It remains a constant challenge to present all of our activities on this website in an easy to navigate format. We try to improve it constantly (hence the quick links on top or the menu to the right). Your feedback is very much appreciated.

Inspired by their neighbors the community of Fiarenana invited Zahana to work with them. Their community built school has been inaugurated in March 2010. Learn more

Building a school for its children was the community second priority for Fiadanana. Since 2006 two teachers, hired and trained by Zahana are teaching in the community built school. Learn more about the school in Fiadanana