Last
July, one of our supporters Jane Lawrence swam a mile across
Ullswater Lake (Lake District, UK) with the hope of raising enough money to
install water facilities into a primary school in the Malagasy highlands. Jane
raised an amazing £600!
As
a result of Jane’s efforts and the kind donations of those supporting her, the children
at Ambohidava Catholic Primary School now have access to a working tap which
provides them with clean, safe water.
Money
for Madagascar’s ‘Education for Life’ Programme aims to provide clean water to
schools, not only for drinking, but also to help them grow food in their own
gardens. The dry season in Madagascar’s highlands means over 6 months without rainfall. Lack of water is a real challenge to anyone trying to supplement their diet by growing fruit and
vegetables.
Happily, the newly installed water facilities allow the school to irrigate their land
which means the crops have a longer growing season, providing more important nutrition for hungry school children. This is exactly what Jane’s
swim has done for Ambohidava Catholic Primary School. The school tells us that
the kids are "happy to be drinking water and watering their crops. As well as vegetables and fruit, we also grow lemon grass and Comfrey . The lemongrass makes a nice tea to settle the stomach and is also good to keep the mosquitoes away. The Comfrey is great to eat like spinach and we can also make an insecticide from it to protect our crops.It even has medicinal properties too. We are very excited about our fruit trees. We keep watering them every day so that one day soon we can enjoy their fruit.”
To
find out more about what we do and to see how you can get involved visit http://www.moneyformadagascar.org/. To make a donation and help us
give more children access to clean water visit http://moneyformadagascar.org/english/make-a-donation.asp
by
Gregg Smith
