Community
Conservation projects will only succeed if they are supported by the local people. There are more than 20,000 people living in 8 communities around the reserve. We work in partnership with the VOI (Vondron'Olona Ifotony), the local village associations, to ensure that the local people benefit from conservation so that they feel involved in and support ongoing conservation.
Once per month, members of the VOI are paid to join the rangers on patrol. This ensures that the VOI are aware of the state of the forest and can help identify forest destroyers.
The VOI will approach forest destroyers where they live and first attempt to educate them about the importance of conserving the forest and the outcome if they continue. As a last resort, the VOI will work with the local Ministry of the Environment, supported by Fandroakando, to arrest forest destroyers and charge them for their activities.
Involving the VOI in patrolling their forest has had a positive outcome: the VOI now organize voluntary patrols of the forest when they are not patrolling with Fandroakando.
Reforestation requires a great deal of manual labor, so we hire members of the VOI for all of our reforestation activities. This provides valuable income and teaches new skills. The activities are:
Throughout the year, when native trees are dropping their fruit, our team collects seeds according to the trees' seasons:
Seeds are then taken to the tree nursery. Each year we collect tens of thousands of seeds.
Tree nurseries are created in several deforested areas throughout the reserve, located as close as possible to where seedlings will be planted. Biodegradable plastic pots are filled with soil, the seeds are planted, and the nursery is covered with branches to protect the seeds from direct sunlight, rain and wind. The young plants are tended until they are ready to be transplanted to other parts of the forest.
Seedlings must be planted before they get too large in the tree nursery. Because each species of tree grows at a different rate, it typically takes 2-3 tree planting sessions spread over a number of weeks before all the seedlings from a nursery are planted.
A few times per year, teams return to previously planted areas to weed out grasses and invasive plants which are starting to crowd out the tree seedlings. Once the tree seedlings are large enough weeding is not required because the trees cast shade that will cause the invasives to die out.
A couple times per year, the Fandroakando team visits each of the villages, accompanied by the district Chief of the Forest, the Fokontany (commune) chief, the local Mayor, and members of the VOI, to meet with the locals. These open-air public meetings are referred to locally as Sensibilisations.
The purpose of Fandroakando's Sensibilisations are to provide information about environmental issues, inform people about Fandroakando activities, and how the locals can participate in conservation. It is also an opportunity for the villagers to ask questions and make requests.
Supporting school education of conservation, forests, and wildlife is important, since children are the leaders of the future and they and their school often have significant influence within their community.
Education is compulsory for children in Madagascar between the ages of 6 and 14. There are a total of 10 schools in the communities around the reserve. Each of the 8 communities has a primary school for children ages 6-11. For junior secondary school (ages 12-15), children must travel every day to the closest school in the largest communities of Andranofotsy and Navana. If students continue their education, they must move to Maroantsetra for senior secondary school (ages 16-18). If students continue to college or university they could attend a small college in Maroantsetra, or if they have the financial support, they would move to a larger city such as Tamatave, Antananarivo, Antsirabe, or Antsiranana.
We collaborate with teachers in the primary and secondary schools around the reserve. We spend a couple of days each year in classrooms in each school. We help the teachers form environment clubs for after school activities and field trips into the forest.
In Maroantsetra, we support the Aye-Aye Environment Club (AEC) for senior secondary and college students. These students meet once a week to discuss environmental issues and to improve their English.
We work with the leaders in this club to help them create and run environmental programs which they are passionate about. Aware of the excessive amount of garabage littering the streets of Maroantsetra, the club wrote a proposal and budget for a Plastics Garbage program. They have installed garbage pails in the Ankiakalava district of Maroantsetra, and twice a month, empty the pails and burn the garbage outside the city.
The students reserve 30 minutes per week on the local radio to talk about environmental issues and promote their programs, which has encouraged new students to join their club.
In a society where most people don't have a computer, and there is no local newspaper, the radio is an integral way in which information is disseminated to the populace. The radio announces news such as upcoming festivals, when a boat shipment is arriving, job ads, and other messages of interest.
Every couple months, Fandroakando reserves a 30-minute time slot at a local radio station. We share environmental tips and provide updates about Fandroakando's activities.
We also support the local (Maroantsetra) Aye-Aye Environment Club (AEC) in their conservation activites which includes radio emissions. Once a week, the Aye-Aye Environment Club students broadcast environmental tips, and report on the environmental activities of their club (see Schools and Clubs).
A few times a year, the communities gather for various festivals: World NGO Day (February), World Rainforest Day (June), and the NGOs rotate the hosting of the Lemur Festival which occurs usually in October.
These events are an opportunity to share conservation information, for the NGOs to present the work they are doing, to do some tree planting, and for some fun (dancing, parades, eating,...).
Fandroakando has prepared quizzes where people can win prizes by texting their answer to the Fandroakando number. Kids learn about conservation through a lemur play, and receive nature booklets.
The festivals provide visibility to the community on the work of the local NGOs, and reinforces the importance of conservation with the community.
The Malagasy people’s favorite food is rice and they eat it with every meal. Hence, there is a great deal of pressure to grow lots of rice. Rice dams help people continue to grow rice on existing land as opposed to cutting down forest to create new fields.
NE Madagascar is extremely lucky to have a warm and humid climate, so the local people can grow two rice crops per year.
Despite this, rice is a crop that requires the right amount of water at the right time and poor yields will result if the conditions aren’t just right. Rice dams help provide a predictable water supply.
There are two rice dams near Takoly and Navana that fell into disrepair. In 2022, we hired an engineer to design and supervise the work and paid for the materials required to do the repairs on the Takoly dam. The local people worked for free because they all understand the importance of a reliable water supply for their rice crops. The people of Takoly are very happy that this dam was repaired since they had been asking for help for at least the past 5 years.
The goal of this project is to provide trees to benefit the people in the communities around the reserve. The secondary benefit is to increase the tree cover in the landscape around the reserve.
In 2022, we launched a project to provide more than 200,000 tree seedlings for villagers' property and near the 10 schools around the reserve (8 primary, 2 secondary). We worked with the VOI to choose tree species: fruit trees (mango, papaya, oranges, jackfruit) for all the schools, and cloves, kola, and intsia for planting around the communities. We then provided seeds and equipment to build tree nurseries, including 85,000 biodegradable plastic bags in which to plant the seeds. The local Madagascar government provided an additional 118,000 bags.
Naturally, this project has generated a great deal of interest with the local people, because these trees will help improve income (cloves and kola) and food security.
