Last year our club, the Leo Club Feierwon Luxembourg, launched a fundraising campaign to build water tanks with sustainable management in the south of Madagascar. Our goal was to contribute to the fight against the extreme drought that the population was suffering in this region. After successful fundraising, we started the work (details of the project can be found here: https://gofund.me/8e76b689)

Our project is now a reality! The construction of two 20m3 (20,000 litre) water tanks in the Androy region, Tsihombe district, is finally complete. The first tank is located in the community of Zambbey, Mande II village in the commune of Faux Cap and the second in Ampary, Anjampaly commune. The two sites are each about 35 km from the centre of Tsihombe, with a round trip time of about three hours. The sites were chosen because they are close to the local population, located in remote areas with very poor access to drinking water (e.g. the main water source in Zambey is 17 km away on foot or by zebu cart on stony, sandy roads).

After a traditional Malagasy ceremony of the villagers, the first tanker in Zambey was delivered with water for the very first time on 24 June 2022. The system was a great success, as the first delivery was very quick (in 7 days, 576 20-litre cans were sold). The tank in Anjampaly is fully constructed, but awaits the installation of its filtration system before the first water delivery.

Tatirano (https://tatirano.org/), the organisation we work with on site, monitors and looks after the systems, so you can follow the state of the 2 tanks (named Zambey Baobab and Anjampaly Baobab) by consulting the information published on their public website, which is regularly updated; so you can see in a concrete way the impact of this project through time: https://stats.tatirano.org/group/1

We salute the fantastic work of this organisation on site in this non-profit project. They have been able to find the locations, secure the land, water source, truck, logistics and administrative aspects etc. to improve the lives and help the villagers in this region affected by recurrent extreme drought. Although many challenges remain, the priorities for Tatirano are now to learn from these first baobabs, solve the problems and test the assumptions made at the beginning to finally reach the goal of a sustainable business model for water trucking in the Androy region.

Let's hope that this initiative, this pilot model that we have set up, which we are convinced of the usefulness for the villagers, will be extended to a larger network of tanks in the near future. Here are some photos we have selected to share with you.

Please contact us if you have any questions, we will be happy to provide more details.

Leo Club Feierwon members
By: Anthony Harivelomandimby, past president