OUR GOALS

ZAHANA is a non-governmental organization in Madagascar dedicated to rural development, education, reforestation, revitalization of traditional Malagasy medicine, and sustainable and environmentally-friendly agriculture.

The goal of Zahana is to develop a community-based rural development project focused on priorities set by the villagers themselves. Initial community meetings with the entire village population are held in each location and the villagers themselves develop their own list of priorities.

It is Zahana’s philosophy that development must be based on local needs and solutions proposed by local people. It is important to start small and stay focused on local priorities rather than on or agendas set somewhere else by national or international bodies.

As a pilot project Zahana is working with the village of Fiadanana in the region of Bongolava. It is our vision that the lessons learned from this hands-on development experience will serve as a model for the expansion of the project on a larger scale. First in the neighboring communities that have been inspired by the example,and then, provided there is funding, on a larger national scale in all regions of Madagascar.

How our Website Works:

We focus on two elements:

I. TEXT: On the first level web page we try give you and overview of a topic.

Links on the page lead you to in-depth information with more text. Overview pages have links to the left for easy navigation, and all have links at the bottom of the page. Some texts have evolved from plant to reality (e.g. building a school), but have been left there as background information.

II. PHOTOS: Visual insights into a rural Madagascar few might have seen.

Photo pages are organized by subject groups. Text is kept at a minimum. New photos are added frequently as they become available or progress is made in our work. For many pictures, which might take a long time to load with a modemconnection: (click here for our photo gallery)

• For a short outline of what we wanted to accomplish with Zahanas participatory development approach in 2005 please see the web page “Where do we work”
  
  
• "Latest News" provides photos and links to the updated web pages that show our progress since 2005.
  
  
• Please make sure you have a look at our photo gallery to get an insight of what can be accomplished by a community that is committed to work on its own development.