Celebrating 10 years of  Zahana

Zahana's 10th anniversary an amazing headline, with the number 10 in there.

It marks a milestone that would not have been possible without your support.

It marks an excellent reason for festivities in the village and an opportunity to celebrate our achievements with the community. It also allows us to take a step back and look at the last decade.

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 (Doré and Donné) attend agricultural school in the next town.

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 well built 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 (water and schooling are taken for granted already). We recently celebrated “the most trees planted”. more

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...)

Our Zahana teacher

For the 10th Year celebration we had been joined by other important health professionals. You see all of them in the photo 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. Ihanta, MD, Founder of Zahana and Director General of Health (taking the photo and not in the picture)

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 a driver to leave the car and join the festivities.

No celebration is complete without a feast.