(English) MfM Trustee Theresa Awarded for Lifetime of Dedication to Madagascar

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

Our colleague, trustee and friend Theresa Haine, alongside another vital and valued ally Ony Rakotoarivelo, have been justly honoured with the Sir Mervyn Brown Award 2025.

The award has been given for their outstanding work with and for Malagasy people and in protection of the country’s culture, its vital wilderness and the promotion and development of partnership between Madagascar and the UK.

Developed and started last year, 2024, by the Anglo-Malagasy Society and the UK Embassy to Madagascar the award commemorates the life and work of Sir Mervyn Brown, twice UK ambassador to Madagascar and authority on Malagasy history, who dedicated his life to the friendship and relationship between Madagascar and the UK.

As well as being a key member and President of the Anglo-Malagasy Society’s committee, Sir Mervyn was also a patron of Money for Madagascar.

Theresa is a remarkable woman, who, like Sir Mervyn, has dedicated her life to Madagascar, its people, environment and national and societal welfare.

In a remarkable career, she has worked as an individual and with us as a volunteer, and now a trustee. Theresa was one of our first trustees and was director for sixteen years from 1999 to 2015.  She is still a very active trustee and has been central from the start to our communications, fundraising, and translation, enabling us to work with and for Malagasy people, helping them lift themselves from poverty and protect and expand the vibrant eco-system in which they live and on which we all rely.

Theresa’s engagement remains as strong as it has ever been, and she has just returned from a visit to Madagascar, where she met friends old and new, caught up with our partners, got involved with our programmes and projects and spent time talking – and listening – to the Malagasy men, women and children her and our work are all about.

Alongside Ony, another dedicated and amazing woman who works with our partners Ankizy Gasy, and with whom we are honoured to have worked even more closely in the past, we are delighted to say this award is incredibly well-deserved, and proper and just recognition of lives given in service to and enjoyment of, Madagascar, its people, its environment and everything it contributes to the world.

Theresa said: ‘I am hugely honoured to be nominated for this award. I returned from a five-week visit to Madagascar just a few days ago so I was unfortunately unable to receive the award in Madagascar with Ony Rakotoarivelo, who is a good friend of mine. I would have liked to have deferred my flight to do so, but I hope to receive the award at the next meeting of the Anglo-Malagasy Society in London if that’s possible.

‘I am even more honoured as Sir Mervyn and his wife were also friends of mine with whom I played music almost every Saturday night when I was working in Madagascar and with whom I made a memorable journey to Tsiroanomandidy in, I think, 1970. They were both wonderful people for whom I had a great respect and whose kindness and generosity I will never forget.’

Money for Madagascar CEO Lova Rasoalinoro said: ‘Theresa receiving this award is really deserved. She has a long relationship that she has with Madagascar, and with everything about it. We travelled together last month and it was a real privilege to experience that, her engagement with people wherever she goes here.

‘She has played a fundamental part in the relationship between the UK and Madagascar. She was here before Money for Madagascar started, and her experience and her open, welcoming, serious and interested attitude and approach to every situation and every person really fed into, and helped create and develop, our organisational approach. She really played a large part in shaping us, and how we see and serve Malagasy communities.

‘She’s a real foundation not just of us as an organisation, but of the whole relationship between Madagascar and the UK.‘