Vakoka Vakiteny in Germany

Yesterday, Thursday June 24^th Mparany and Tojo came to Germany. Sophie had already been there for one week, so now the team of Vakoka Vakiteny is complete and ready for the events beginning in about two weeks!

Vakoka Vakiteny in cooperation with “Grønn Hverdag”

June 14^th, Sophie Küspert-Rakotondrainy from Vakoka Vakiteny had a meeting with May Lise Talgø from the environment organization Grønn Hverdag (which meens “green living”) in Stavanger, Norway. Vakoka Vakiteny accepted to join Grønn Hverdag’s book project which will be accomplished together with their Malagasy partner Green Pilots in Antsirabe and Foul Point, Toamasina.

The intention of this project is to publish a book which contains traditional stories from Madagascar. These stories shall show how the nature can help itself, and how important it is with an intact ecosystem, for example how the lemur indri-indri contributes to growing trees.

How much Vakoka Vakiteny will be involved is not yet decided, but we will at least be in charge of the layout and printing of the books, which is estimated to be in about 1000 copies.

Vakoka Vakiteny’s summer program in Germany

There has been made some minor changes in our summer program in Germany. The new dates for our presentations, meetings and events are:

Saturday 10^th of July, whole day

Baden-Baden: Stand at the old-timer meeting

Thursday 15^th of July, 10AM

Gernsbach: Bookstore Mäx und Moritz – Lectures for children

Thursday 15^th of July, 5PM

Bühl: Meeting with the association Eine-Welt-Verein Keniahilfe e.V.

Friday 16^th of July, 10AM

Gernsbach: Presentation for the children in the secondary school Albert Schweitzer Gymnasium

Friday 16^th of July, 5PM

Gernsbach: Bookstore Mäx und Moritz – Lectures for adults

Special guests: Counselors from the Malagasy Embassy in Berlin

Sunday 25^th of July, whole day

Schopfheim: Participation at the bazaar Markt der Möglichkeiten

We want to invite you to join us at these events if you are in the area.

Welcome!

Do you want to join the association?

If you want to become a member of the association supporting Vakoka Vakiteny, you can easily fill out a form and send it to kuspert@smbara.org. As a member you will get continuous information about our work. You can decide for yourself how much you want to donate, either monthly or yearly.


Here are the forms in English and German:

Print out the form, fill it out and send it back! It's easy :-)

Please see also this for more information about the association.

Mirana's story

My name is Rasivelonoro Miranaharisoa Josephine and I am 12 years old. I am in grade 7 at the Lutheran secondary school in Ihosy.

I really love to read books, especially fairytales and other stories. We have some books at home, but most of them are in a foreign language, generally in French. Also nearly all of them are comics like Donald Duck or Lucky Luke. I often don’t know the language, so I just look at the pictures, but I still like it very much.

When I was in the 5^th grade in school we had some books distributed in class. That was the last time I read a whole real book. In school now, we sometimes have to read, and we go to the school library. The teacher tells us what to do and what to read. Mostly we only learn lessons in the library, and we don’t read books. In the library there are no books telling stories but only fact books.

One thing I really wish is to have a book on my own. My dream is that someone just gave me a book, even if it’s lust for loans. If someone did this to me I would dance of joy, and I would tell all my friends that I now have a book!

Children's atlas

Where is Antananarivo, where is Toliara and where is Mahajanga? Some Malagasy children don’t even know what the largest cities of Madagascar are called and where they lie when they finish primary school. Not because the teacher hasn’t told them, but because the long and complicated theoretical explanations are simply way too incomprehensible for them. They lack any kind of map or atlas, and without this equipment, the teacher can explain to them a thousand times, that Toliara is south of Antananarivo - they cannot even imagine what "south" means.

The solution is simple: the children need a handy children’s map book or atlas of Madagascar. It should be telling about every region and major cities with pictures and short explanations. This book should therefore be found in all the schools and homes on the whole island.

We in Vakoka Vakiteny want to write such a book. To achieve this, the illustrator has to travel all over Madagascar to take pictures. All maps must be remade to make them suitable for the children’s age. 

For around € 2000 Vakoka Vakiteny kan have this book written and illustrated, including all travel, and when it is printed the expense will be around € 4 per book (if in 1000 copies or more).

The association will collect all donations and forward them to us.

Malagasy children watch TV, but they don't read

In February Sophie Küspert-Rakotondrainy completed a questionnaire among 112 children in the 5^th grade at 4 primary schools in Toliara. These are some of the results:

44 % of the children watch TV every day

46 % of the children don’t own a single book

18 % of the children never read books

These results show that the children watch a lot of TV, but that they don’t read because they neither have books at home nor at school. It must be mentioned that these children live in one of the biggest towns in Madagascar. On the countryside they won’t have TV (or books), whereas it is normal with a TV in nearly every home in town.

Do you want to contribute to change this situation? Help us producing books for Malagasy children. Please contact the association.