MfM joins International Education Community

Money for Madagascar has become part of the Global Schools Forum, with which we will work sharing information, experiences, plans and policies to help improve education in Madagascar, and in low- and middle-income countries across the world.

We are delighted to announce we have joined an international community of organisations working to improve education for children in low- and middle-income countries.

As of Wednesday 29th January, Money for Madagascar became an official part of the Global Schools Forum, a 162-organisation group which is working to provide quality education to, and support more than 115.7 million children, in more than 1.35 million schools in 64 countries.

We have joined the group because of our Education for Life programme, in which we work with Malagasy communities to improve and ensure education for children – and in some cases adults – who may otherwise not be able even to access education, or be unable to reach their full potential.

In Madagascar, 79.9 per cent of Malagasy people live on US$2.15 (£1.73), the global poverty baseline, per day or less.

This poverty has shocking and unacceptable outcomes, including that one in ten Malagasy children do not reach their tenth birthday, while nearly 50 per cent suffer stunting caused by malnutrition.

In education terms, it’s also extremely harmful: 40 per cent of Malagasy children do not even complete primary school, for reasons including that their families have so little money their children are forced to work rather than attend school, and that families or responsible adults have too little money to pay school fees and/or provide equipment such as pens and books.

Many of those who can attend are prevented from achieving their true potential by illness caused by malnutrition, or hunger preventing them from focusing on learning, or lack of adequate facilities and trained teachers.

Our Education for Life (EFL) programme works with Malagasy people to help them deliver and benefit from high-quality education.

Its initiatives include:

  • paying young people’s school fees
  • helping adults access education to improve their livelihoods and provide for their children and others
  • providing food and clean water to children at school
  • providing infrastructure to help enable communities to reach school as well as other vital services including hospitals
  • carrying out school rebuilds and refurbishments
  • training teachers
  • providing children with school kits and schools with computers and tablets to improve education standards

MfM also, through its Protecting and Enabling Vulnerable Children programme, provides shelter to young people, including ensuring their access to school.

We are working to help Malagasy children, and their wider communities, improve health, education, standards of living, and reach their full potential as they and we all, deserve.

We are joining the Global Schools Forum to help strengthen and support education by growing the global learning community, testing promising solutions and sharing experience and findings, and strategically-partnering to shape policy and scale solutions.

MfM CEO Lova Rasoalinoro explained: ‘We like and are delighted to be part of GSF because we are all non-state organisations with the same objective: to achieve equitable outcomes in education for the most underserved children in low (and middle) -income countries.

‘We think taking advantage of the resources and expertise within the community will be highly valuable to us and the communities we work with.

‘We have two programmes Education for Life and Protecting and Enabling Vulnerable Children which are aligned with GSF.

‘We are looking forward to connecting and networking with, learning from, and sharing experiences and expertise within the community, to continuously improve our interventions and foster relationships with policy makers, researchers, advocacy organisations and establish global partnerships to scale our work, as well as accessing GSF’s valuable resources, toolkits, and technical expertise.

‘And we aim to share our information and experiences, related to our proven model, with the GSF community, and bring our experience to contribute in shaping global policy in education.’