(English) Reaping the fruits of the forest – DAF with Mfm

Mae’n ddrwg gen i, mae’r cofnod hwn dim ond ar gael mewn English.

Restore Forests, Renew Futures in Madagascar

Double Your Impact with Earth Raise 2026

Wednesday 22^nd – Wednesday 29^th April 2026

In three weeks’ time, the Earth Raise 2026 (the new name for the Big Give’s Green Match Fund) begins.

It is one of our two major fundraising campaigns of the year, and gives you the opportunity to double your impact in Madagascar, improving lives and protecting and growing the vital, vibrant Malagasy wilderness, upon which we all rely.

From 12pm (UK time) on Wednesday 22^nd, to 12pm on Wednesday 29^th April, everything you donate through the Earth Raise 2026 web page will be doubled in value: if you donate £20, that will ensure £40 is delivered to Malagasy communities and Malagasy wild spaces.

Ninety per cent of Malagasy species are found nowhere else on Earth, and Madagascar is one of only four ‘carbon sinks’ – places which take in more carbon from the atmosphere than they emit – on the planet.

In the face of climate crisis including increasing temperatures, rising sea-levels and crop failures, the world relies on the Malagasy forests and other wild spaces.

But Madagascar is also experiencing deforestation at an alarming rate. If things continue as they are, all of the island’s native forests will be gone within 40 years.

This deforestation, including all its negative outcomes for the world, is in part driven by the sheer poverty in which Malagasy people live. More than 90 per cent of Malagasy men, women and children live on or below the global poverty baseline.

Most Malagasy people report missing at least one meal each day, and 50 per cent of Malagasy children suffer stunting caused by malnutrition. In these circumstances, it is understandable that people cut down trees to increase the land on which they can grow food.

But there is an alternative. Our Earth Raise 2026 campaign is targeting £60,000 – of which £30,000 will be match funded, and £30,000 will be from you, our supporters.

With that money, we will:

• train Malagasy people in dynamic agro-forestry and climate smart agriculture, to restore degraded land, increase crop diversity, resilience and yields increasing food security and incomes, and reducing the need for forest clearance

• restore land and reforest, recreating spaces for Malagasy plants and animals to thrive

• strengthen community conservation leadership, to improve environmental protection and stewardship, and livelihoods and incomes

We know that this works, because we are already doing it.

In the last 12 months, we have been working with communities in Tsinjoarivo and Andasibe/Torotorofotsy, where we now have eight trained technicians, 80 Lead Farmers, and 328 adopting households, cultivating diverse, multi-layered, climate resilient agroforestry plots which improve soil health and food security.

Across the programme, 66 hectares are now cultivated using DAF, the equivalent of 94 football pitches.

One example of this is in Ambohimanambola, a village on the outskirts of Antananarivo, where Dady offered his land, on sloping terrain and with low fertility, to serve as a learning plot for the introduction of DAF practices.

Interventions on Dady’s land included creating drainage ditches to improve water retention and planting pineapples along contour lines to reduce soil erosion, stabilising the land to prepare it for agroforestry.

Next, Dady planted fruit, medicinal and energy tree species, and within months they were growing strongly, and each was surrounded to conserve soil moisture, suppress weeds, and accelerate soil regeneration.

By June 2025, Dady’s plot was thriving. Tree species including avocado, and pineapple plants are growing strongly and producing fruit, while other crops including beans and cayenne pepper were thriving in the improved soil.

This is just one example of the ways in which we and are partners are working with Malagasy men, women and children, to open doorways to improved access to food, increasing incomes, and the protection and growth of Madagascar’s spectacular and important wild spaces.

With your donation, which will have double the impact, and will unite conservation and development, we can do so much more.

The slogan marking this, our 40^th anniversary year, is ‘Hazo tokana tsy mba ala, Ny firaisakina no hery: One tree does not make a forest – Together we are stronger.’

With Earth Raise 2026, we can stand together, and build stronger forests.