| Celebrating the achievements of women is something we are very familiar with here at SEED (it’s hard not to be when our organisation is full of fantastic females!) so, for International Women’s Day, we make sure to pull out all the stops. We’re not alone in going all out with IWD celebrations, as the day features an important city-wide event in Fort Dauphin, too. Every year on the 8th of March, the women of the city come together to participate in a parade through Fort Dauphin. This year's festivities provided an important opportunity for people to celebrate and have fun, after a difficult period of recovering from Cyclone Emnati and its impact, which extended to some of the schools we have built through our Project Sekoly. As we work on increasing the resilience of our schools in the face of more frequent extreme weather events, we’re looking for new team members to join us in assisting communities through similar work across several of our projects! If this is something which you, or someone you know, would like to get involved with then scroll to the bottom of this newsletter to see our current job vacancies. | | The SEED team in their lambahoany. Photographed by: Laura Jackson | | Our International Women’s Day celebrations started at 7am in the middle of Tanambao– a bustling market and trading area in Fort Dauphin– with our team wearing matching blue, red, and orange lambahoany (a traditional garment worn in Madagascar). A several thousand-strong parade of women slowly formed, and we made our way through town, dancing to Denise - Bio (a popular song in Madagascar). It was a great day full of celebrating the achievements of women across the city, with the event bringing together people from a variety of backgrounds and sectors. Although there is a long way to go to achieve gender equality in Madagascar, IWD in Fort Dauphin creates a vital space for women to not only shout about all of their successes, but also raise awareness of the challenges they face daily. We are even more motivated than ever to continue working towards achieving greater gender parity through all of our projects here at SEED! | | | The damage inflicted by Cyclone Emnati on Vatambe Primary School. Photographed by: Lomba Hasoavana | | Over the past few months, Madagascar has been heavily impacted by not one, not two, not three, but four extreme weather events. Cyclone Emnati, the third tropical storm to hit Madagascar during this cyclone season, caused widespread damage to the country's Anosy region, including Fort Dauphin where SEED is based. Tsina Endor, our Deputy Director, who has lived in Fort Dauphin her whole life explained that Emnati was the most severe cyclone she has ever witnessed: “in my almost 50 years in Fort Dauphin, I had never seen a cyclone this bad”. The cyclone severely impacted people, their homes, and their livelihoods across Anosy. Even structures built to last, including the schools we build through our Project Sekoly, such as Vatambe Primary School as pictured above, were heavily damaged. With more severe weather conditions likely to become more frequent across the world and especially in Madagascar, we are looking closely at our schools designs, to see where we can make these structures more resilient to the changing climate. | | | | SEED's Conservation Research team members and volunteers. Photographed by: Laura Jackson | | With new and expanding projects taking place across all of our departments, we have lots of new and exciting opportunities here at SEED! From a Senior Community Health Programme Officer, to a Senior Conservation Research Assistant; we currently have several vacancies in our Madagascar-based team, as well as a position open for a new Chairperson on our Board of Trustees. | | | | | This email was sent to friend@example.com | © SEED Madagascar. All rights reserved. |
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