I often take out a map of Africa just to get my head around those remarkable moments in Madagascar that I experienced a few months ago. Moments when I am treading through a rice fields emerged in water to reach what feels like one of the most remote school buildings on the planet. Moments when I am sharing a bowl of fried fish and rice with the Head of Education in the town of Masoansetra. Or moments when I am testing the new toilets of a school with hundreds of smiling onlookers just outside the door.

Hiking across rice fields

These are remarkable memories that I share with my travel companions. But there is something else that is even more remarkable. In one of my earlier posts I shared my admiration towards the committed people working in the field for UNICEF. Nonetheless, in these villages on Madagascar there are local men and women committed to creating a better life for their kids who in many cases do not have a bright future. Whether it’s building toilets and classrooms, giving vaccines, educating about malaria, teaching mathematics, or simply coming up the means to go to school – with little resources, great innovation and a strong sense of community, they succeed.

Indoor village meeting

I am more committed than ever to making life much better for as many kids as possible. And in my daily job I have a fantastic advantage as well as responsibility to contribute to the philanthropic work of IKEA Foundation.

Child peeking through window

The annual Soft Toys for Education campaign is now starting in every IKEA store around the world. For each soft toy you buy, the IKEA Foundation gives one euro to UNICEF and Save the Children. I don’t have to tell you what I will get my family and friends for Christmas this year.

It’s been a month now since we have returned from Madagascar but it still feels like yesterday. There hasn’t been a single day that I haven’t thought about the wonderful experience that we had in Madagascar.

Most of us know Madagascar from the cartoon ‘Madagascar’. And it is not surprising that the makers of the movie based their story on the creatures that only live on this island: the lemurs. They look so cute and cuddly – I just wanted to pack some in my bag to take back home!

As Magnus already pointed out in his blog before the trip: while Madagascar is characterised as a biodiversity hotspot, and BBC documentaries pay so much attention to the unique wildlife of the island – and we had the chance to spot quite a bunch! – there is surprisingly little information on its population.

And that is a pity. Because it was the people of Madagascar that made our trip truly unforgettable.

If the company of co-workers was delightful and fun, and the UNICEF team from Madagascar fantastic, the welcome that we got from the people of Madagascar was simply mindblowing. There were several instances that we couldn’t keep our tears in, overwhelmed by the hospitality and the singing and dancing with which we were received in the villages.

It is humbling to be received in such a grand way, the more so when you think about the living conditions of the people. In Madagascar, 7 out of 10 people live below the poverty line of 1 dollar per day. Despite the fact that people live in such poverty, we saw that they are very eager to send their children to school. Many teachers are appointed by the community and some of these teachers are being paid by the government (though these teachers were on strike when we visited the project site because they had not received their salaries for months) and some by the community – mostly in bags of rice since people simple don’t have cash.

There is no such thing as a pre-service training course for teachers in Madagascar so that means that no teacher actually had any training before starting as a teacher. To help the teachers to be more effective in their work, UNICEF  provides training to the teachers. However, the needs are very big and pupils don’t even have schoolbooks; the number of books available is insufficient and the books are kept at school and reused for many years.

Under these circumstances, it is amazing what people can still do. For instance, I was impressed by this school teacher, who had a very good interactive style of teaching.

Still, it is hard to imagine how people live and work under these circumstances. We visited a health centre on the way and found that it hardly had any medicines to treat people but more shockingly, it had no running water. The health centre was mainly used by women who came to give birth: can you imagine a maternity hospital that does not have clean running water?

The birth rate in the country is high and currently 50% of the people are 18 years or younger. You can imagine the strain this puts on the education sector: even more schools need to be built, more teachers trained and more material provided to make sure that this young population get a quality education and the opportunity to make a better life for themselves and their family.

There are many challenges ahead for the people of Madagascar but I am very glad that we are supporting the work of UNICEF in a very important area: that of education. Because the children of Madagascar have the right to receive a good education and to opportunities to make a better life for themselves and their family.

To all the wonderful people that we met in Madagascar I would like to say: Misoatra! Thank you!

Read “The End of the Road – part 1″

When the whistle sounds the break is over. I enter the old building, where the youngest children have their lessons. It’s very dim inside but the teacher still notices the boy in the corner teasing the girls in the row behind him.

©Fredrik Bengtsson

©Fredrik Bengtsson

I meet the older children in the new building. They sit at their new benches designed as smart “flat packs” by the architect Mario at UNICEF in Antananarivo.

©Fredrik Bengtsson

We get the opportunity to ask questions directly to the children. “What will you be when you grow up?”. One boy says, “Farmer”, whereupon all the other children laugh. It was never really clear why it was so funny. Another boy says “wood collector”. One girl says she likes math and wants to become a teacher.

©Fredrik Bengtsson

Role models are important in all societies, but perspectives differ. At one point we tried to describe that we have snow and ice in Sweden and that it is impossible to grow pineapples there. I try to clarify and I refer to the ice cubes, the ones you have in drinks. Do you think that made it clearer? It is difficult to relate to the outside world, also for me.

©Fredrik Bengtsson

Today is the last day on our trip. But the journey does not end here. And why not? Well, it’s very simple – as long as these children have not reached their destination, the journey is not over. A child-friendly school building is a very good start, but a sustainable future requires a focus on the entire community, the ability and desire to get to school, hygiene, trained teachers, school supplies, etc. The list of needs is long. But UNICEF is listening. And they act with incredible innovation, even with the smallest means.

©Fredrik Bengtsson

Today was our last day on our field trip on Madagascar. Every day this week, I have traveled a little longer and have had far greater experiences than I had expected. Lotta from UNICEF (National Committee Sweden) sums it up well – You think you’ve reached the end of the road, but here you realize that the road goes further.

©Fredrik Bengtsson

Today we visited the village Varingohitra four miles south on Highway 5.  A road like any other road in Maroantsetra – sand, boulders and giant potholes filled with water. The speed is slow and we have to get out of our van to push it when we get stuck in the sand.

©Fredrik Bengtsson

The school is located a few hundred meters from the main road, has two buildings – a newly built, with two classrooms funded with money from IKEA’s Soft Toy campaign, and an old, with one classroom. 69 students attend the school, 45 boys and 24 girls. They share 48 school desks. Morning classes with writing and reading comprehension are in full swing. The youngest children read aloud in the old building and we hear them through their thin walls made from leaves of the travellers palm tree, “Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Me, Me, Me, Me”.

The School District Director speaks to the parents and teachers followed by open questions back to us. A mother is hoping for a better walk path to the school. The Principal wants more classrooms. The needs are the same as we have encountered during our visits.

A whistle interrupts the meeting. Time for break and time for play.

©Fredrik Bengtsson

©Fredrik Bengtsson

©Fredrik Bengtsson

“Do you have football team we can play against?” – Yes, we have a girls team and a boys team. “Could we play with them both?”

When we were sitting inside with all the serious adults (including ourselves) we heard some girls playing football in the field outside. So I asked Mario from UNICEF (whose father was in the national team of Chile) if he thought we could ask for a game to get to know the kids a little better, to interact with them the universal football way. -Yes!!!

So, said and done, six and later seven of us, were split up into two teams with a lot of happy children to join and the match could begin.

©Fredrik Bengtsson

Heroes were many in the 30 degrees and 80% humidity, amongst the ones that stood out were the surprisingly strong little girl that played libero in my team and Maria who scored once and made a goal gesture that had the crowd go mad.

Exhausted and really happy to have had this chat with the kids we cleaned up as much as we could and went on with the serious meetings, all happy and childlike inside.

©Fredrik Bengtsson

Today we have moved from the capital of Madagascar – Tana – to a small small village far up in north called Maroansetra. Here the vegetation is much greener. People are welcoming us with waving hands and smiling faces. The pulse and rhythm are calmer here than in the city. We are on the countryside now. I have a good gut-feeling.

We have now joined the local UNICEF team here at Madagascar: Joelle, Graham and Mario. They will be our host and guides from now.

As a startup, Graham gave us an overview of how UNICEF works with their projects both on a general level but also local here in Madagascar.

Here in Madagascar it is mainly about the basics: what can we do to get more children to come to school? What are the needs? Buildings? Educating teachers? Waterpoints? Sanitary things? No matter what the problem is, UNICEF always try to work through the people in the country. They want them to be able to manage everything by themselves in the future.

Seven out of 10 children in Madagascar go to school. Out of them, there are 4 out of 10 that finish school. UNICEF tries to find the trigger points needed to get more children into school.

Filled with the basics, we went to a primary school close to our hotel. This school was actually built from money from us at IKEA. UNICEF has developed a new way of constructon. It is called Eco Friendship Construction. You mix 50% sand and 50% clay and then press them into blocks in a special machine. By using this technique you don’t have to burn the clay in an oven – that saves our rainforest that was used as fuel. You also don’t have to transport the blocks and that saves both time and money. You just transport the machine to the place where they build the school. Several checks are done to ensure that the mix of sand and clay are correct.

The benches in the school are developed to also be easy to transport. They are foldable and that gives flat packets. Instead of transporting 50 pcs in a truck you now can take 200 pcs instead. Thinking of the bad roads this makes a hugh difference.

One of my reflections was that IKEA and UNICEF actually have the same minds in some of the questions!

Today we went along a river to EPP in Anantonambiliany. The village has a very isolated location and it took us almost 3 hours to get there by boat. At the end we had to walk barefoot through flooded rice fields.

The whole village had gathered and gave us a warm welcoming with songs and dances. Since the village is so isolated they rarely get any visits. So they had arranged a party to celebrate that we came and visited them.  I feel touched, happy and overwhelmed of the effort the people in the village made due to our visit.

The school that UNICEF has built in Anantonambilany has just been finished. To build a school in a village so far away from the city is a challenge. At first all material had to be transported with a bigger boat to a storage place where the river divides into two different rivers. After that the river becomes shallow and the only way to transport the material is to take it on a pirogue. A pirogue is a handmade boat made out of wood that the people in the villages use to transport people and materials along the river. The last path the material has to be carried up to the village. It took 6 months to build the school in Anantonambilany. Normally it takes about 3 months.

The school has about 250 students and 6 teachers. School starts at 7.30 in the morning and ends at 13.00. The need for schoolbooks is big. Some books being used are 10 years old and there are not enough books for all the children. The teachers in the school are very committed and some of them live 1-1.5 hours by boat away along the river. When they attend trainings during the holidays, they first have to walk 5 hours and then take the taxi boat to the city.

The visit ended with a common celebration dinner that the village had arranged together. The team from IKEA and UNICEF gathered together with the adults in the village in the school which had been transformed into a dining room. During the meal the women of the village entertained us with wonderful singing and dancing.

To me this was a day with wonderful meetings with children and adults, and I´m grateful and overwhelmed that I got to share this day with the people in Anantonambilany.