Analasatrana community school: a global partnership for one small village

A small hillock nestled between rice paddies and peanut fields, Analasatrana hardly seems like its own village.  More like a rural “neighborhood” of sorts, a hamlet.  Granted this is only the slice of Analasatrana visible from the main track; its domain extends across the fields to the clusters of the homes dotting the nearby landscape.

Even so, with only a few hundred residents and less than 200 children of primary school age, Analasatrana was never given its own school.  Local resources simply couldn’t support it, neither the government school system nor the community itself, one consisting of struggling farmers and zebu herders.  As a result children were forced to walk several miles either east or west to the nearest schools in the two adjacent villages.  Only about fifty of Analasatrana’s children could manage this, as these other schools were already overcrowded with their own local students, and some parents were simply unwilling to send their children so far for an education.

I worked a lot in Analasatrana, one of the 12 villages within the “rural commune” that was my home as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  We addressed community health issues — safe water, diarrhea prevention and treatment, malaria, nutrition — as well as micro-enterprise, and the reinforcement of local associations and their strategies.  I soon came to understand the serious education issue as well, and began meeting with the parents and community members who were determined to improve the situation.  Together we laid out a coherent, and created a simple work plan, budget, and design for a school house.  We approached local authorities and business owners, held several community meetings, and gradually built a base of support for the effort to build a primary school in Analasatrana.

At the time I was also interacting more and more with ecotourists visiting our region, promoting local artisans and crafts, the new local radio station, and other projects.  I used the area’s only ecolodge as a primary means of reaching out to tourists about these local community development endeavors, spending many nights chatting with visitors and encouraging them to take advantage of locally-run activities and contribute to the local economy.  Their support bolstered numerous critical pilot projects, giving the community the confidence to engage directly in ecotourism and improve their livelihoods through it.

Oftentimes tourists would ask me what they could do to help the community to achieve its sustainable development goals.  On one such occasion, a British couple who had stayed in the Ankarana sent me an email upon their return to the UK.  They described how touched they had been to meet local residents, children in particular, and to see them struggle to  survive in such harsh conditions.  The squalid, overcrowded state of the schools had especially moved them, and they expressed the desire to directly support primary education in the Ankarana.  In my reply to their kind words, I told them about the plight of Analasatrana, and the community’s desire to improve the situation.  I shared our basic plans with them, and asked if collaboration on the project might interest them.  Their response was enthusiastic, and thus a beautiful partnership was born.

We nurtured the  Analasatrana community school project through a series of emails and Skype conversations, across the oceans and over  nearly two years.  Our goal was to build a two-room school house using local materials and local labor, as well as to acquire an adequate supply of text books and other teaching materials.  I served as the liaison between the community and our partners abroad, ensuring that progress was as smooth as possible, and providing regular updates.  The donors, with experience in development issues and familiar with Madagascar, were sensitive to the inevitable snags and delays, and cognizant of the community’s lack of formal reporting experience; they asked only for our regular, honest updates from the ground. As the seasons change, it can become impossible to proceed with different aspects of construction, or to bring all necessary parties together for important decisions; our project was of course subject to these factors of weather and poverty, and our donors were wholly understanding.  I led numerous projects throughout my time as a PCV, using a variety of funding sources and various degrees of reporting requirements; the community school project was by far the most realistic, effective implementation, which will no doubt have far-reaching impacts on the life and success of the school.

Now, eight months since my departure, the school is preparing to open its doors for 2011.  The political instability that has been rocking Madagascar since late 2008 has severely stalled progress, yet the community has done what it can to prepare, raising money and awareness to strengthen the school as it begins to work for Analasatrana.  Although I personally get frequent updates from partners on the ground, I can’t wait to return in person and see that the project has come to fruition…

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