Projects

We are in Madagascar on the outskirts of Fianarantsoa, the country’s third largest city. Here drought, typhoons and the aftermath of wars and pandemics are making life for so many truly desperate.

Children, even very young ones, end up on the streets or employed as slaves. Left to their own devices. Victims of sexual abuse and exploitation.

Here we have implemented a project dedicated to orphaned girls and boys.

It is a small village with 11 cottages, a large dining hall, a bakery, two drinking water wells, two sports fields, and a large garden full of flowers and medicinal herbs. To date, we have taken in 100 children, the youngest being a few weeks old, the oldest 17 years old. They all go to school. And in the afternoon, the older ones take a computer class. We also host 7 young mothers who are victims of sexual and domestic violence.

The structure of our village, with the different cottages and a large one-acre space for the children to cultivate and play, has made it easier for a real community to emerge. The girls taken in not only take care of their children but also mother others.

And children help each other, like brothers and sisters.

To choose the children to be rescued, we went at night to the streets and then to the villages, to the plantations, to the places where we knew situations of exploitation and violence existed. And we were able to take them away with us. Many of the children taken in, before arriving in our village, had never slept in a bed or eaten sitting at a table, almost all of them arrived without even a pair of slippers.

But now they are happy and everything is going well.

The organization of the village is in the hands of 8 nuns of a small order and 12 young girls. We also have a doctor, a caretaker, a gardener, and three workers who, together with our entire community, take care of the three-hectare land where we have started many crops and a large farm. Our goal is to make the village at least self-sufficient, in terms of food in particular.

A small house in the village is dedicated to guests and volunteers who would like to come and discover a part of Africa and themselves. And to the donors, who will be able to touch the result of their generosity.

We have named the village IZAHAY DIA! which in Italian means WE ARE! It is the silent cry of these children. Yesterday you could read it on their fearful and serious looks, today on their smiles.