News

Wild Forest Silk Scarves

Purchase a "lamba" - a traditional Malagasy forest silk scarf worth £45

Support our Wild Silk project by purchasing a beautiful "lamba" - a traditional handwoven Malagasy forest silk scarf worth £45 - the product of our Wild Silk project recently featured on the BBC program. The cost of your purchase pays a living wage to the weavers and Malagasy women who belong to the women's cooperatives we support through our silk program whilst helping to create a 'market' for the wild silk products they make.

If you would like to support this project by purchasing a "lamba" please contact jamie@feedbackmadagsacar.org

Alternatively donate to our Wild Silk Forest Appeal

Sir David Attenborough + BBC film our Silk Project

Sir David Attenborough and the BBC have recorded a 4-part series about Madagascar. We spent three days filming with the BBC / David Attenborough Team. They filmed our Wild Silk project as an example of good practice being carried out in conservation and development in Madagascar. This project helps populations living around the last remenants of Madagascars temperate forest to make good livelihoods from wild silk cocoons harvested in the indigenous forest. The forest pays the people to protect - and even replant denuded areas.

" I hope the Madagascar programmes will please you and that they will help in drawing attention to the island's extraordinary wildlife and the work that...you and your organisation are doing to help conservation there." - Sir David Attenborough

The three part series "Madagascar" and the follow-on 4th episode "Attenborough and the Giant Egg" - in which we feature - are available for purchase on DVD and Blu Ray from the BBC shop.

Building local capacity to improve health

Ny Tanintsika, Feedback Madagascar’s Malagasy partner organization, won bids to manage a new USAID health project in two of Madagascar’s regions, bringing support to a population of over 540,000 over 4 years. The ‘Commune Champion’ approach, which we have adopted for several years now, will be developed further as from 2010, with a view to local communities taking responsibility for improving their health, as well as monitoring and evaluation of results. Motorbikes are desperately needed to enable field staff to access incredibly remote and sometimes dangerous areas.

Clean drinking water for rural communities

27 boreholes were successfully drilled and installed with handpumps in 2009, as well as all the necessary preparatory support including creating sustainable water management committees and education on hygiene & sanitation to reduce diarrhoeal disease. This was achieved thanks to collaboration with Fresh20, USAID and numerous generous individuals…. Lancaster school kindly supported the water supply for the health centre in Nangaiha, Antandindo (as well as completion of the health agent’s housing) and SKIP Southampton supported the water supply for the Ambohimahamasina health centre. New water projects are planned for 2010 with the financial support of The Eagle Foundation and Fresh20.

Promoting women’s & children’s rights

The promotion of women’s and children’s rights is now combined into our sustainable livelihoods programme thanks to FCIL (Canadian government funding). In addition, a youth advisory service has been put in place to provide essential advice on family planning, reproductive health & life choices, with a view to addressing unplanned teenage pregnancies & curbing infectious disease rates. Working with volunteer artist Paula Cox, new educational and awareness-raising materials have been developed for use in project areas.

Artist Paula Cox is selling exclusive fine art prints of her Madagascar inspired artwork with 20% percent of the profits made being donated to Feedback Madagascar click here for more info >>

Family planning

Since 2008 our family planning work has been integrated into our silk & tapia forest conservation programme; 35 new family planning providers were trained and are providing services to their rural communities. We also worked with government health services to train community-based family planning agents in the use of injectable contraceptives; 36 of the most experienced & competent existing community agents were selected to receive this additional training.

No to mosquitoes

In collaboration with Voahary Salama/Global Fund and PSI (Population Services International), Ny Tanintsika’s malaria prevention programme runs into its second year now. 39 community malaria agents were trained and operational in 2009, responsible for education work, treating cases of malaria in children under five, and referring cases to the nearest health centre where necessary.

Saving the rainforest

Conservation International (CI) confides management of the 'NODE' small grants programme in the Vatovavy Fitovinany region to Ny Tanintsika for another two years. This next phase of the programme, to be launched in February 2010, ensures support for community-based forest management associations to promote the sustainable management of the rainforest. One CI objective is to reduce carbon emissions from destruction of the rainforest.

Schools Schools Schools

Thanks to support from the Eagle Foundation, new three-classroom primary school buildings were built in Ambodiaviavy & Ambatolampy, and repairs to a secondary school were made in Ambolomadinika. This as well as providing rain- water harvesting systems for the secondary school and also two other primary schools (built by FBM) to improve school hygiene. 1,073 pupil benefitted, as well as teachers & communities in Madagascar’s Vatovavy Fitovinany region.

Innocent support for yams

Feedback’s collaboration with RBG-Kew to promote improved yam cultivation techniques has continued with a view to improving food security amongst communities bordering the rainforest, as well as reducing pressure on the threatened wild yam populations. In 2009, a competition was organized between the four community-based forest management associations involved, with agricultural equipment as prizes. Representatives were thrilled to go on an exchange trip to visit a more advanced yam cultivation zone in the Morondava area. A new partnership has since developed with the Innocent Foundation to enable us to expand the programme into new areas and to work with more community-based forest management associations.

We keep going from strength to strength

Feedback Madagascar / Ny Tanintsika’s Madagascar multidisciplinary team grows to 47 with offices in Antananarivo, Ambositra and Fianarantsoa. To see our team for yourselves click here >>