Moringa Update

Hello internets!

I wanted to post an update about my Moringa tree project. As of last Friday, the project has been fully funded! Thank you so much to everyone who donated to this – because of your contributions we will be able to plant 3,900 trees at 78 schools across five different communities! The students at these schools will not only benefit from improved nutrition, but the communities will be able to use the funds from selling Moringa seeds to purchase new school supplies. In the impoverished rural communities where these schools are located even small changes like this can make a big difference for students.

We’ve begun the process of distributing the trees, as right now is the ideal time for planting. It is also important that the schools receive the trees before June 26^th, which is Madagascar’s Independence Day. We’ll be celebrating 54 years of independence from France, and from what I’ve heard it’s going to be quite a party. It’s also essentially the end of the 3^rd trimester and the beginning of Grandes Vacances (winter break). Since this is a school-centered project, it’s important that it be carried out while there are still students and teachers at the schools!

All Peace Corps projects require a contribution from the host community, to ensure that they are invested in the program and to build a spirit of mutual cooperation. For this project, one of the community contributions is to arrange transport for the trees from Association Tinoñe’s garden here in Ambondro to the various participating schools. My counterpart and I have been working hard to ensure that all 78 schools know that their plants are now available. Some of these schools are located up to 20 km away, so organizing transportation is difficult. The communities are very excited to be receiving the trees, however, and many people are lending their ox-carts to schools so that they can come here and pick them up. We’ve also spaced out the distribution over several weeks, to give all the schools adequate time to organize transport and make their way to Ambondro.

As for the training session, we’ve set the date at June 21^st. This is a Saturday, so there will be many cars headed to Ambondro for the market, making it much easier to organize transportation for the attendees.

Everyone here is very excited to see this project happen! I’ll be sure to post more updates during the coming weeks!

Thank you all again for making this a reality!