Why not ask for a present with a difference, or give friends or family a meaningful gift by funding the building of a school bench in Fort Dauphin?

Madagascar’s government recognises education as one of the key challenges to future development - due to a lack of adequate provision for education, almost 80% of the population are unable to read or write. The Anosy Region of the southeast where Azafady works is one of the most impoverished and isolated regions of the island. Here, the children are so eager to learn that some walk up to 20km a day in the hope that there will be room for them in a school – in a classroom they can expect to be overcrowded and under-furnished.

Azafady’s school-building initiative Project Sekoly began in 2006 after we helped extend a school in the village of Evatraha. Before long we were inundated with requests from neighbouring villages to come and work with them to build schools for their communities. The local education authority, CISCO, undertook that for every school Azafady built, they would provide a qualified teacher. Working together in this way we’ve been contributing towards the goals set by the Madagascar Action Plan: this aims to build 3,000 new classrooms by 2012, to enable all children of 6-14 years old to be taught for at least half a day, every day. We feel that all children have a right to an education – and we hope that you’ll wish to play a part in making that a reality in southeast Madagascar.

With these classrooms, children will finally have access to formal education without having to walk for miles. However, every classroom needs somewhere for its students to sit, and Azafady have recently received an urgent request from CISCO for the provision of benches for the students of five under-equipped schools in the region’s urban centre of Fort Dauphin. One of the most pressing priorities is Tanambo Middle school which, staggeringly, has just 30 benches for some 2,000 children. Such conditions severely hinder children’s ability to learn.

This is where we need your help.

So far, thanks to our donors and the hard work of our volunteers, Azafady have supported 9 communities – seeing that each has a furnished two-classroom school, teacher’s accommodation, school latrines and a closed water source. But we don't want to stop there!

There is still a great deal of demand for this essential resource in the schools of Fort Dauphin – all you need to do is donate just £24 to fund the building of a bench for one of the schools, to help improve the rates of attendance and the learning conditions for the children. One bench would be great – but of course, the more the better!

If you are looking for a gift with a difference, or just something much in need that you’d like to support, when you sponsor the provision of a bench we'll send you a personalised Certificate of Donation and a full proposal detailing the project.

Visit http://www.bmycharity.com/azafadyschoolbenches to donate a school bench for children in Fort Dauphin in time for Christmas.

You just need to donate the £24, and, in the personal message section, provide us with the email address which you would like the certificate of sponsorship and information sent to, and specify the name(s) you wish the certificate to be addressed to and from. If you’d like a hardcopy, we would be happy to post you one if you add an extra £2.50 for printing and postage to your donation – and email the address you wish it sent to, to info@azafady.org. You will then receive a card version of the Certificate along with a hardcopy of the full project proposal, but please note that for Christmas we’ll be sending out certificates up until the 21st of December.

More information about Project Fanaka(PDF).

To find out more about Azafady and the whole range of our projects, visit our website http://www.madagascar.co.uk or contact info@azafady.org.

Thanks for your help – and please do pass the word around!

Lomba, Azafady Project Manager, Madagascar:

"The conditions in the schools where we work are really terrible. Often there will be no tables or benches for the children to sit at, and often half the wall will be missing, and the roof leaking. Most children don’t even go to school when it rains because their classroom will flood and they have nowhere to sit.

"That’s why this project is so important. Providing benches and tables for the children will triple the number of children attending school – I remember in one village we built some benches because the school had no furniture, and when the children found out the school had benches to sit on, so many children started going to school that we had to go back and build a bigger one!"