Educating the Children of Antsirabe

Children & youth

Jan 26

Who: The Mustardseed School

What: Primary and secondary school

Where: Madagascar

Project period: 2020

Web: The Mustardseed School

Voantsinapy, the Mustard Seed School, is an independent primary and secondary school with 600 pupils from poor families in the town Antsirabe in Madagascar. This local grassroot-initiated school was established twenty-five years ago by Razafy, a widow with five children who lived in a poor neighbourhood in Antsirabe. Her vision was to educate street children, children who had to beg, work, steal, or care for their siblings, with the aim to bring them out of poverty.

Together with her family she made thousands of bricks by hand and raised the first building in 1994. She found the pupils by visiting homeless families in parks and alleys, in backyards and in markets. The pupils are today still recruited among poorest of the poor. With support from private donors in Norway, the school has acquired more buildings, outdoor areas, and agricultural land.

An agriculture project helps educate the pupils in sustainable cultivation, and the crops are used in the children’s daily school meal. Surplus from cash crops helps finance the school. Today Razafy’s daughter Noro is the school’s dedicated and visionary headmaster. The school has throughout the years obtained a reputation for its high-quality education, good results, dedicated and caring teaching staffs, and its extraordinary warm and receiving atmosphere. In many ways the teachers also function as social workers, visiting pupils at home, providing help and support to their families. Also, many Norwegian and other international students have through the years done their teacher training practice at this school – a mutual beneficial partnership.

Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world with 26 million residents, and with a large number of illiterate people. Voantsinapy is approved by the government, and the curriculum is the same as in public schools. The exam results of pupils from Voantsinapy is far above the average level of Madagascar.

The school priorotizes orphans, children who live with single parents or grandparents, children with parents with very little or no income, and children from homes with alcohol problems.