(English) Funding cuts hit Malagasy communities

Miala tsiny fa tsy mbola misy amin’ny teny malagasy ity lahatsoratra ity.

‘Bordeaux (who only wished to give his first name), a farmer with sharp features, does not know who Donald Trump is, but he knows that everything stopped for him in February. Suddenly, gone were the promises of a permanent house, enough seed for five years, fertilizers, farming equipment and technical support to cultivate a two-hectare field provided by the government − not to mention a health centre and school for his children.’

France’s Le Monde reports from Menabe region in Western Madagascar where, it says, 1,000 Malagasy farmers have been seriously affected by the dismantling of USAID.

The newspaper reports that the farmers – and their families – have since February lost programmes which were dedicated to improving health, education, agricultural and biodiversity protection.

Access to decent healthcare, education and the ability to ensure you have enough to eat are basic fundamental rights and should be automatically provided to every man, woman and child on Earth.

But failure to protect our environment in all its wonder is not just a failure to do our duty as a species capable of doing so, it is also a pathway to serious harm to every living thing, including every person, on the planet.

This news is very close to our heart.

Our three programmes, Education for Life, Children for the Future and Resilient Forests and Livelihoods, provide precisely the services – decent healthcare and education, food security and routes out of poverty, and the protection and growth of Madagascar’s vital, vibrant wilderness – impacted by the loss of USAID in Western Madagascar.

As we have noted before, we do not receive money from the US or any other government, and so our programmes are not, at present, threatened by the decisions of those governments.

But we are affected.

First, because any cut to any organisation working in Madagascar – including cuts to US funding to the Malagasy government – impacts every organisation and what they can do, and so second, because Malagasy men, women and children are cast into even deeper challenges, and have even greater need of the opportunities they deserve and we can provide.

Because Madagascar is the world’s fourth-poorest country.

More than one million of its people are in a situation of hunger so bad that only outright famine is worse. Fifty per cent of Malagasy children suffer stunting due to malnutrition, one in ten do not reach their tenth birthday, and four in ten never complete primary school due to hunger, illness and other challenges directly-related to poverty.

And in their desperation to grow more food – and in the country’s desperation to make more money than trade, the rainforest is being felled at such a rate that it will not exist at all in 40 years. This, again, will impact every person – every living thing – on the planet, sparking climate catastrophe and human upheaval on scales never before seen.

At the precise moment at which we can and should be doing more, we are doing less.

And yet we know how to do this. We are doing it in rural communities, working with Malagasy people to help them lift themselves from poverty and protect and expand their local environment.

But we need help. It is not just that we cannot and should not be doing this alone, but also that we cannot and should not do it without significantly more money and support.

This is not an outright funding request – though anything you can donate will be used by us to extremely good effect – but instead it’s a call for support.

Help us to spread the word, to develop new ways of working, and of collaborating. Help us to find sources of funding so we can not just continue, but expand to meet the enormous need we all know is there.

Please share this post, and let us know if you see any opportunities. Contact your community leaders, your friends, family, and your elected representatives, and let them know what is happening.

The world must not turn its back on Madagascar and its people. Because to do so would be to condemn those people and to turn its back on itself.