Jean Corbanie is a volunteer animator for the French association Un filleul pour Madagascar. While the association is looking for volunteers to ensure this primordial link between the French sponsors and the young Malagasy, it returns to this role of hyphen that has assumed with conviction for more than 16 years.
Organizing the departure of a colleague can lead us very far … in Madagascar, for example. So the virus took me. Sixteen years ago, Bernard, with whom I worked in the field of industrial reconversion in the North of France, opted for more direct assistance when entering the service of a local authority. A “pot” was organized, but it was a gift: it was clear: with his wife, Dominique, and another couple of friends, Bernard had decided to replace his son Jean with an action to help the Malagasy population . He therefore hoped that the fruit of the collection would be given to this association. A meeting of information on this project was announced, I went there and since Ghislaine and I are sponsoring children in school in Imerimandroso.
A visit was organized and I found myself on this red island to visit two agricultural colleges that the French NGO Fert, emanation of French cereal farmers, had just created … A first in Madagascar! In 2006, another trip made it possible to observe the evolutions and to visit another college, Ambalavao which had just opened in the region Haute Matsiatra, that is to say a little below the center of the country. … Who said that when you put your hand to the plow, you had to pursue the furrow without looking back?
To see the concrete life on the spot is, for me, important: these villages discovered at night by a road, without electricity, each having taken refuge in the hut before the end of the day … these colleges located in former premises d A hundred or so children “packed” in a primary class, these young people left in their unhealthy neighborhoods of the capital … Images, shocks that remain engraved and provide energy on days when one would be Tempted to stop this mission of facilitator.
Because, traveling to Madagascar – self-financed! – it is good but the work, once returned … is a long time: go to schools meet the students to talk to them about Malagasy children who do not have enough to fill each day … invite them to “jump A meal to give the Malagasy their cost; Try to persuade parents, friends, to sponsor one of these children in order to provide schooling, to fund the costs that the parents can not afford, or to participate in meetings, “grants” to raise funds and To explain to passers-by the situation of this people ranked among the poorest … even if this classification of misery displeases me. It is also a matter of explaining to schoolchildren that there one lives with one euro a day … to compare to the fortunes of many Westerners …
The role of the sponsor of sponsorships involves making the link between godchildren and godparents: collecting social, economic, political and climatic information to disseminate them; To ensure the sending of the letters sent by the godchildren, and then to send to Madagascar the letters of the sponsors; Sometimes write in the name of sponsors who were unable to do so.
