Pictures from the distribution of Ampanirio

Finally we have received some more pictures from Madagascar! They show the distribution of the environment book Ampanirio to the schools Farimbona, Filadelfia and La Joie and the youth organization Green Pilots in Antsirabe. The feedback from students, teachers and the members of Green Pilots is very positive. A big thank you to ‘Grønn Hverdag’ in Stavanger!

Unwrapping with enthusiasm

The first glance into the book

Some of the students that had their contributions published in the book

Farimbona School

Ampanirio is handed over to Fanja, leader of Green Pilots Antsirabe

Green Pilots

Vakoka Vakiteny’s books in Japan

In October we got an email from Fujii Books in Kyoto in Japan who had seen our web page and wanted to buy some books from us. We sent 6 books to Japan at once, and they were displayed at a book exhibition on the 13th of October. We are very happy that our books have got some international recognition and that people in other places of the world can have the opportunity to see Malagasy children’s books.

Tamagawa Children's Library in Kanazawa City received some books from Vakoka Vakiteny through Fujii Books and Ms Azusa Kita who works at this library explains their work as follows:

Our library was open in November 2008, and fortunately the number of visitors to the library reached 500,000 this year. Books we have are mainly for children. So it can be said that we're different from other ordinary libraries.
In our library, there is a room, called World Picture Books from the start. For this room, we have collected 4,000 picture books from 100 countries so far (Including your country).
Why?
Because we think that children can know the world through picture books, and it can rear children’s curiosity and interest much. We provide story-telling in as many languages as possible. And we believe that these can bear fruit as the peace of the world someday in the future.
Therefore we've longed to collect picture books from as many countries as possible. So actually we do collect not only Malagasy picture books but also other countries' ones.

We are very glad that Dangaligny and co. are at Tamagawa Children's Library and that Japanese children also can enjoy at least the pictures!

Here is their web page http://www.lib.kanazawa.ishikawa.jp/kodomo/ (in Japanese).

Vitrine de Vakinankaratra

From Thursday 13^th to Saturday 15^th of October Vakoka Vakitenty participated on the Vitrine de Vakinankaratra, a fair and exhibition in Antsirabe arranged for the 14^th time. The reason for making this fair is to give industrial, commercial and agricultural manufacturers a chance to show their products in order to “fight regression” (source: FIOVA, the arranger of the fair: http://fiova.over-blog.com/).

Mrs Hanta reports that she had a very nice time these three days, assisted by Kathy, a young lady who has experience in marketing. There were many people visiting the stand and even the Minister of Industry Henri Rasamoela came and took a look at our books. The feedback from the Minister was very positive and he emphasised that Vakoka Vakiteny shows that it is possible to do great things with few resources and a small apparatus. Also the Major of Antsirabe, Mrs Olga Ramalason was impressed and asked for an appointment with Mrs Hanta.

The stand. Second and third from the left are Mrs Hanta and Kathy

Mrs Hanta (on the right) is showing the books to the Minister of Industry (third from the left).

Right behind the Minister is the head of FIOVA.

Mrs Hanta and Mayor of Antsirabe, Mrs Olga Ramalason are enjoying a drink

Children and youth who were passing by got the chance to sit down and read at the stand and totally there were sold 33 books. People were impressed by the quality of the books and they gave much positive feedback. However, Vakoka Vakiteny also received suggestions for improvement and ideas for further production.


The pictures in this post were taken by some journalists covering the fair. However, Mrs Hanta promises to send some more pictures that show the stand, taken by friends. We will post those as soon as we receive them.

Vakoka Vakiteny on RTA radio

Mrs Hanta will be interviewed directly on Radio Télévision Antsirabe (RTA) tomorrow morning. She will tell about the work of Vakoka Vakiteny and the importance of books. Further she will inform about where it is possible to purchase the books and how schools can contact Vakoka Vakiteny if they are interested.

Mrs Hanta will also participate on “Vitrine de Vakinankaratra”, an exhibition where different products from the region of Vakinankaratra are exposed. She will make a stand with the books and products of Vakoka Vakiteny. It will take place October 13 to 15 at the avenue in front of the railway station in Antsirabe.

In addition she will train students and teachers at the Farimbona school in Antsirabe about books and literature on Monday. This is in connection with the distribution of Ampanirio, the environment book.

We will of course cover her activities on the blog and we also hope to be able to share some pictures.

The web page is updated

Mparany has worked hard for several weeks now and taught himself how to update the Vakoka Vakiteny web page, www.vakiteny.org.

We have made modifications in the structure of the page and replaced some information. Now we are more satisfied with it. The association has its own space on the page (http://www.vakiteny.org/Association.htm) where the membership application form can be downloaded, and all our newsletters can be downloaded from http://www.vakiteny.org/Newsletter.htm.

If you should find some problems with the page, please tell us. We are still in the “learning by doing” phase, so we are happy to receive any feedback.

New pictures

Here are two of the ten new pictures we have received from Nassar, our illustrator for the youth novel about Todisoa. They show Antohomadinika, one of the poorest quarters in the capital Antananarivo.

Report from Hanta

Today we had a short meeting on Skype with Hanta, our coworker in Madagascar. She tells that she has worked with the distribution of Ampanirio, the environment book, and Uncle Tefy. Furthermore she has also sold some copies of Uncle Tefy and done publicity for this book in Antsirabe. The feedback from people is very positive, she reports. She has also presented Uncle Tefy to the “Alliance Franco-Malgache” in Antsirabe.

The cover of the geography book has to be strengthened a bit since the back of some of the first books we received from the printing house had a tendency to dissolve. Last week Hanta visited the printing house. Unfortunately she could not collect all the resting copies, but we hope that the last covers soon will be glued.

There have already been finished and delivered 10 new black and white pictures for the book about Todisoa, which will be scanned and sent to us this week.

Hanta has had much work to do during this first month. But it has been interesting and enjoyable, she says.