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Reforestation in Action


 


 

 

Seed balls made by our students

The video of our dancing students says is all: Created and choregraphed by our midwife they celebrate their seed balls. Please click the YouTube photo below to view it, ideally before you read on.

A video celration the seed ball made in the school in Madagascar

We asked our partners for some cultural context: ‘Song and dance are integral parts of our culture. For any event like to cutting the first hair of a baby, for circumcision, death, exhumation or having public officials visiting a village. As song is part of our culture, a song will boost our kids to understanding of what they are doing. Loosely translated they are singing: hey kids let’s rebuild our earth by planting trees and we will do it in new style with the seed balls. Let’s build improved cookstoves and make charcoal with local stuff. By doing so we’ll make the environment healthy, the air will be fresh and our village green.”

In our School's winter break - and seed balls we introduced as part of reforestation curriculum. Our seed balls are rather large. More the size of a tennis ball then the more common ping-pong ball, or marble size.

The October 28 SMS (‘text’ in US-English) from our choreographing midwife: “50 students participated on the latest seed ball class. In Fiadanana they made 500 more today and in Fiarenana 393.” The result: 2750 seed balls plus the 893 from this week = 3643 and counting.

Making seed balls in our school in Madagascar

Drying seed balls for later use in Madagascar

Now that seed balls are integrated in our curriculum we are ready and prepared to literally ‘field test’ seed balls in the next rainy season. With seed balls at hand now, we may get many more trees planted much faster, while we still continue planting seedlings grown by our diligent gardeners.

With more than a dozen seed balls per student, we hope they will demand to make many more, once they see how much fun it is to throw reforestation all over the landscape.