Good News

Good news this week – I have been able to secure some new, additional funding for the Village Voices for Development (VVD) project. Media Support Partnership (MSP), experts in media for development, have agreed a small grant to support the project. The funds will help ALT MG bring in the necessary expertise for the evaluation of project outcomes, and it will also help meet some shortfalls in the current project budget. We are really delighted that MSP are coming on board. Andrew Lees Trust has  benefitted from training and evaluations from their consultants in the past for ‘Project Radio’ in Madagascar, so they know and understand the context very well. They also worked with ALT and ALT MG to develop the original  proposal for the VVD project based on experiences in Malawi.

UN Collaboration

The other good news this week is that we have managed to secure the collaboration of the United Nations (UN) on the VVD project. The Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) in Madagascar has seen fit to endorse the project and has agreed also to provide some dedicated training via the UNDP human rights representative. We will produce some radio programmes with the OHCHR and UNDP to broadcast to the project’s listeners. The collaboration of the UN is very welcome and we hope it will help to open new doors and lever additional supports.

At home and in the field

Also this week I finalised the decision makers questionnaire with the local team and they have started the interviews. This is Mr  Enrique Alvarez Sirias (Head of Sub-Office) of WorldWorld Food Programme’s Mr Sirias in S Madagascar

Food Programme in southern Madagascar who is participating in the project and has just done the ‘decision makers’ baseline interview with ALT Mg’s project co-ordinator Mme Alice Rafanomezana. WFP are very keen on the VVD project and will be featured in one of the radio programmes due to be broadcast from next week. They will be answering villagers’ questions about their ‘Canteen Scholaire’ project in the south. Other programmes due to be broadcast next week are about security and how villagers can contact the police when they are threatened with burglars; another features farmers who want to know why some communities are being given free seed and others are not.You can help this project by donating via CAF https://www.cafonline.org/system/charity-profile.aspx?friendlyUrl=andrewleestrust

SHARING WITH THE COMMUNITY

There are some great Malagasy musical events happening in the UK – this first one coming up on April 27^that Green Note –