Toliara, Madagascar, December 2021
The project aims to restore natural resources on the Malagasy coast and tackle food insecurity by planting 7,200 mangrove trees of five different species. This project has a strong educational component – it allows students from nearby schools to participate in a planting day and raises awareness of environmental issues throughout the school year.
Between 2002 and 2019, Madagascar lost 1.3 million hectares of forest. Mangroves, the island’s coastal ecosystems, are the first victims of this deforestation.
Aware of this ecological and socio-economic threat to local populations, A Tree for You is working with the association Eau de Coco on the field, and with Kinomé for the educational component to bring Malagasy children back in contact with nature, especially mangroves, and enable them to take real action to restore them.
In the classroom then in the mangroves, the pupils are learning about the challenges of climate change, playing an active role in restoring aa mangrove close to home, and interacting with pupils in France involved in a similar initiative in the Wegscheid forest, in the Vosges.
During November 2021, over 150 pupils from Salines school in the town of Toliara (south-west Madagascar) attended the first awareness-raising workshops on the challenges of protecting mangroves; some of the pupils also took part in reforestation days during which 3,100 propagules were planted in the mangrove of the village of Tsingoritelo. The students received a planting certificate at the end of the day.
A second wave of planting with other students, to introduce 900 mangroves, is planned between May and August 2022. During the next school year 2022/2023, new classes will be able to participate in planting 3,600 additional trees, making it possible to reach the objective of 7,200 mangroves for the project.
