Support for school garden in Madagascar

At the New Generation School Garden, founded by Evrard Benasoavina in 2020, children learn about the environment, ecosystem services for people, and sustainability.

The school garden is situated in northeastern Madagascar, the region with the highest remaining forest cover of the island. The region is a global but also national biodiversity hotspot with high levels of endemism (rich in animals and plants which cannot be found anywhere else in the world). Although rich in biodiversity, Madagascar is yet one of the poorest countries in the world.

Evrard Benasoavina, manager of New Generation school garden, remarks: “Many local people have never been inside a forest and don’t know its value and beauty. Our Malagasy society is very young and many kids grow up without knowing the importance of our local nature.”

With a combination of teaching in outdoor and indoor classrooms, our school garden provides an experience with nature, training and knowledge on sustainable agriculture, practical experience in growing and preparing a healthy meal, the importance of natural ecosystems and forest conservation.

In the past two years, we have built a school building, bungalows for overnight stays and we offer regular visits of school kids to our garden.

Currently, we are establishing a fish pond to teach pisciculture and raise fish for food. However, we are lacking food for the fish to grow.

In addition, to the fish we keep chickens and goats at the school garden. To keep the animals save, we want to build a fence and improve the animal houses. Also, to manage the garbarge of our weekly visitors, we would like to install garbage boxes for recycling. This is very important as we want to set an example for garbage management and keep our school garden plastic free. Lastly but importantly: Land titles are very hard to get in Madagascar because the land registration is very expensive. To ensure our school garden land for many future generations, we need to complete one final step for which we lack money: the final certificate and the land markings.

If you want to learn more about us and our history, you can visit our webpage:

https://schoolgarden-mg.org/

If you want to watch the video about Evrards story, please visit the DLC website and check out "From dream to reality":

https://lemur.duke.edu/protect/sava-conservation/sava-videos/

To fund our plans we need your help! Here is where you can take part and make a change!

What are the costs?

Garbage boxes: 355 Euro

Fences: 355 Euro

Fish food: 260 Euro

Animal house: 380 Euro

Land title: 350 Euro

Every little contribution counts for us!

We thank you in advance for your support! Your contribution will make a difference to the lives of the people from north-eastern Madagascar. The world is changing rapidly and many people feel powerless and hopeless. With this project, we want to encourage the new generation to shape a healthy and viable world. If you have questions or want to contact us, please visit our website and leave us a message. We are happy to answer your questions or receive feedback!

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New Generation Team