In many parts of the developing world, women play critical roles in managing natural resources, yet are often excluded from community-level decisions regarding the resources. In rural Madagascar, women are often responsible for gathering resources like wood, water, and agricultural products, which means they have a unique understanding of these resources, and are disproportionately impacted by changes in the availability of the items. Including women in decision making thus ensures greater success and sustainability of projects aimed at conserving nature and biodiversity.
Mirindrasoa Women's Association
Mirindrasoa's welcome song to Lemur Love
The Mirindrasoa Women’s Association of Efoetse (village neighboring Tsimanampesotse National Park) was formed in 2015 with the goal of bringing together friends and also increasing the group's ability to earn income through small-scale business endeavors. In 2016 Lemur Love began supporting Mirindrasoa. In initial consultations, women from the association expressed concerns over food security, particularly in the dry season, and noted that they often could not financially afford to take advantage of potential income generation during this time, or simply didn’t have enough food for their households. With our initial investment, Mirindrasoa started a micro-loan program whereby members could take out loans to buy items and sell them at a profit, and then repay their loan with interest. This enables participants to build savings, which help buffer the low food availability in the dry season, and prevents individuals from having to extract forest resources for charcoal production- something that is much more work and last resort activity.
Since then Mirindrasoa has also built a small structure to sell items to travelers (food, bottled water, craft items, etc.) and begun small scale poultry production. In future we’d like to facilitate exchanges wherein delegates from Mirindrasoa travel to other more-developed women’s associations in Madagascar to learn about sustainable expansion.
Since then Mirindrasoa has also built a small structure to sell items to travelers (food, bottled water, craft items, etc.) and begun small scale poultry production. In future we’d like to facilitate exchanges wherein delegates from Mirindrasoa travel to other more-developed women’s associations in Madagascar to learn about sustainable expansion.
IKALA Stem
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Ikala STEM aims to empower the next generation of Malagasy women in STEM disciplines. We are excited to collaborate with the Malagasy Chapter of Ikala STEM and to help forward their goals. Our first project will be to jointly organize and host Ikala STEM's Annual Workshop (IAW19) on skills in science including ‘lemur science’. This will be held in Antananarivo in June of 2019.
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Lemur Love is a small US-based non-profit organization (501(c)(3)) that conducts scientific research and
partners with Malagasy women to build capacity and promote conservation.
partners with Malagasy women to build capacity and promote conservation.