SOMETHING to Inform our Understanding (Self Organizing Learning Environments)

Success in the Forest- Uof M Design school meets Madagascar 2010

EcoExplorers Madagascar 2010 from Shannon Kohlitz on Vimeo.


Dear Friends, Family, and Supporters

We wanted to reconnect with all of you. Our apologies for being out of touch for some time now. Things have been busy in the hot forest and cool village, and internet is quite unreliable here in Southwest Madagascar.

In the past two months, we’ve hosted a large group of University of Michigan students from the Schools of Art and Design and Natural Resources and Environment http://vimeo.com/14349267, constructed our forest research station, and continued reforestation trials in the nurseries.

This past week was a big one. Along with the World Wildlife Fund Madagascar, national, regional, and local forest officials and members of the press, visited our site to check out our operations.

With chameleons, birds and baobabs bas-relief sculptures on the walls of the research station (thanks to the hard work of the art students) (http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/mad.hoavy/EcoExplorers?authkey=Gv1sRgCPPonbnmw5mtzgE#), Ho Avy’s Malagasy staff played a key role in gaining the official recognition of our rights to the land where we’ve built the research station.

Another agreement was signed permitting Ho avy and the village association we collaborate with to create a forest reserve. This reserve will be a no-exploitation forest and will be at least 500 hectares (more then 1000 acres). This achievement is the first of its kind in SW Madagascar, and has been in the works for over two years. With your support, big things are happening here.

Today we are holding a fundraising drive to fund the creation of a community center in our village Ranobe. It will be a place for engaging in education, livelihood and health interventions on a larger scale in the village.

Please see this link http://goto.gg/6270 for a complete description of the community center’s activities. It is incumbent that we get 50 donations to continue fundraising from Global Giving, so even a donation of ten dollars would make a big difference. Please pass on this link to your networks and friends.

We have about three weeks to complete the fund drive. And with your help this community center will help facilitate local activities and multinational collaborations to reduce deforestation in one of the world’s most threatened, unique, and biodiverse forests.

Please see the link below for the latest and most up to date Ho Avy happenings.
http://permaculture.org.au/2010/09/02/united-colors-of-ho-avy-growing-trees-and-growing-with-them/

Thank you all very much,

Anthony Arnold for Ho Avy


--
Anthony Arnold

hoavy.org
newlatitude.org

'Today’s most vital steps in conservation are mapping biodiversity, identifying priority areas, restoration, and making conservation profitable',
from The Future of Life, E. O. Wilson