Wonderful viewers, welcome to another inspiring episode of Good People, Good Works. This week we feature the first in a two-part series on Azafady, an award-winning UK-based charity that strives to better the lives of the Malagasy people and the ecology of the island nation of Madagascar.

The charity was founded a little more than 10 years ago now. Why did we decide Madagascar? I think the main reason was that Madagascar received so little attention. Just to outline some of the basic facts about Madagascar, it has a population of somewhere around 20-million people, and it's a huge island. It's the world's fourth-largest island, so it's about two-and-a-half times the size of Britain.

The area's spectacularly beautiful. It has enormous potential for tourism. Pioneers are not just doing work while they're here, they're relating their experiences when they get home. It's helping to develop Madagascar's tourist industry. The people are the friendliest people in the world, they'll share their last plate of rice with you. They are the real joy of being in Madagascar; the smiles and the laughs that you share with people here.

Azafady focuses its efforts on the Anosy and Androy regions in southeastern Madagascar, as the organization feels the people in these remote places are most in need of assistance in a variety of areas. The group is working with over 80 rural communities as well as with residents of Fort Dauphin, the capital of Anosy. Mark Jacobs is the managing director of Azafady in the UK and deeply cares about the Malagasy people.

We’re quite small in the UK, we’re just three staff members. And in Madagascar we employ some 70 local staff. And our work really is about working closely with the most disempowered, the most marginalized people in the community, and helping them to improve their quality of life, to be able to live in harmony with the remaining very precious forest. And to help them to get access to the basics, through provision of schools, building wells, building pharmacies and improvement to things like sanitation infrastructure.

We're also trying to help the people that are already ill by building village pharmacies. We've built some 30, 35 pharmacies so far, meaning that people in these remote communities can get access to drugs which can save lives. We've also got a mobile doctor working with people that have got higher level illnesses such as cholera, and malaria and things like that.

So we are protecting the water, we are dealing with the causes, and we're also dealing with the symptoms of the problem after people have got ill. And hopefully in a few years’ time, we'll start to see a massive difference.

Azafady’s Project Salama focuses on rural health and sanitation with the goal of changing the lives of 80,000 plus people living in the Anosy region. Since 2002, the Madagascar government has been promoting the World Health Organization’s WASH program or Water Sanitation and Hygiene to end the illnesses that result from impure water and the lack of formal toileting facilities.

Demonstrating how much faith the government has in Azafady’s commitment to the Malagasy people, it made the group a regional coordinator for the implementation of WASH in Anosy.

Project Salama uses a three point approach to meet the challenge. First, community health promoters spread the word on public health best practices through an initiative called Participatory Hygiene and Sanitation Transformation to show people how common preventable diseases arise.

Next, the physical infrastructure to better public health is installed such as closed wells and latrines. Third, Project Salama aids the community in establishing local committees of volunteers who take responsibility for the maintenance of the infrastructure and governing their use. In addition, Azafady also has a similar program called Project Tanana Meva that focuses on building sanitary facilities for Fort Dauphin residents.

The community frankly does not have any kind of restroom facilities, and so they usually use the beach for all of their excrement needs, which really isn’t healthy for the community in general and for any visitors who come, and so what we’ve been doing is building latrines so that people don’t have to walk down to the beach.

One in 10 children presently die as a result of unclean drinking water. And just for example, access to clean drinking water is as little as three or four percent in the rural areas. So in spite of all of these very hard-hitting facts, Madagascar doesn't really hit the international agenda. You very rarely hear Madagascar in the news.

Most people who have heard of the word Madagascar will have heard it from the animated film, which of course really tells you nothing about Madagascar. (It) tells you nothing about the need for people in the international community to engage and help. And that is really why Azafady decided to work there.

Madagascar and neighboring islands are truly treasures of biodiversity with eight plant families, four bird families, and five primate families that are not found anywhere else on our planet. Part of Azafady’s mission is to conserve the precious flora and fauna of Madagascar.

We, as an organization don’t see conservation and development as separate entities, we see them very much as part of the same continuum. So the work which we do is very much about working on all levels with communities to help them to understand their environment, to help them to be able to live in harmony with their environment.

We are planting huge amounts of trees; for example, I think since January (2010) we planted somewhere around 25,000 trees. We are working on improved agricultural techniques, trying to challenge the old practices, which are causing so much deforestation. In Madagascar at the moment there is somewhere around 90% deforestation, so 90% of the forest is gone.

And then Madagascar as a whole is one of the great biodiversity centers on Earth. It’s one of the most important areas on Earth for conservation. So our stewardship and our projects are focused around working with communities sensitively within people’s culture, to help them to find alternatives to the practices which can impact negatively on the forest.

As part of its sustainable livelihood initiatives, Azafady is working to expand educational opportunities for children living in the commune of Mahatalaky in the Anosy region. Since June 2006, in partnership with the Regional Ministry of Education, Azafady has funded and built sixteen rural schools.

Last year, after spending three weeks volunteering for Azafady in Madagascar and seeing the needs of the island’s people, Reza Pakravan, a British-Iranian financial analyst, set a goal of raising sufficient funds to enable Azafady to build two more schools in southeastern Madagascar.

While I was there, I really got in touch with the reality people are facing in their day-to-day life, and how amazingly Azafady is addressing these problems. And once I got back, I just wanted to be part of it.

The school projects, which Reza has focused on, is a very high-priority project.

Getting involved with Azafady has been an absolute pleasure, and getting to know these fantastic people definitely changed my life.

To publicize the need for financial contributions to build the schoolhouses, Mr. Pakravan and a friend decided to go on a strenuous bike tour through the mountainous terrain of Nepal.

I teamed up with my friend Marco, who actually made the first donation; we decided to do a really significant challenge, and we decided to do this bike ride. The expedition was in Nepal, and we did 1,000 kilometers in 10 days, which was the toughest challenge I’d ever done in my life.

The first couple of days were fine; I was going around, I could find food. After day four, it was a real struggle to find supplies. And I have to eat 6,000 calories a day, so that’s a lot of supplies. So I bought stuff for day five and six, and stuck it into the saddle bags. On day seven, I was climbing uphill, and as I went further along, I found it more and more difficult to find supplies because nowhere was open, so no water, no food, nothing was available.

It got to the stage that I ran out of everything I had, and the next village probably was 30 miles really uphill, probably a five-hour, serious climb, but fortunately, I saw some peasants sitting in the middle of the road, which was very strange, having a huge pot of rice and some curry. They saw my face and my lips, and straightaway they invited me to join them. They were very, very kind; they shared whatever they had with me.

Reza Pakravan and his friend completed the rigorous biking journey and generated much attention for their cause in the process. Consequently enough funds were donated to construct the schools for the children.

What we do is we provide a two-classroom school, usually constructed from wood. We also provide all of the furniture, which is used inside that school. We will provide a well, so that every kid that goes to the school will have access to clean drinking water, and a girls and boys toilet, which is used by the children. And hopefully, it’s a bit of a seed project to help encourage improved sanitation in general in the village.

And then there's a teacher's house that we will build, because often the teacher will come from outside the village. And once we've built all of that, the local government agrees to actually supply a teacher. So we can walk into a village where there's been very little in the way of education infrastructure, and from the ground up, create a school hand-in-hand with the local communities, and everything that it needs to be a fully functioning school for the years to come. So it's massive for us.

Thank you Mark Jacobs, Reza Pakravan and all other people working to make Azafady’s many endeavors in the splendid nation of Madagascar successful so that the warm-hearted residents can have a better tomorrow.

For more details on Azafady, please visit: www.Madagascar.co.uk

Lively viewers, we enjoyed your blessed presence today on our program. Join us again next Sunday on Good People, Good Works for our second and concluding episode on Azafady, featuring more details on their praiseworthy initiatives and how Supreme Master Ching Hai has assisted with their efforts to build more schools. Coming up next is The World Around Us after Noteworthy News. May Divine light forever shine on our planet.

Madagascar is home to some of the most extraordinary flora and fauna on Earth, and is widely regarded as one of the planet's highest conservation priorities. Eighty percent of its estimated 200,000 species can be found nowhere else in the world, earning it a place among the top global biodiversity hot spots.

Noble viewers, welcome to today’s Good People, Good Works as we conclude our two-part series on Azafady, an award-winning UK-based charity that strives to better the lives of the Malagasy people and the ecology of the island nation of Madagascar.

The people are the friendliest people in the world, they'll share their last plate of rice with you. They are the real joy of being in Madagascar; the smiles and the laughs that you share with people here.

Azafady is a small British charity, a Malagash NGO that works on a wide array of projects to protect the environment and the lives of people in southeast Madagascar.

Azafady focuses its efforts on the Anosy and Androy regions in southeastern Madagascar, as the organization feels the people in these remote places are most in need of assistance in a variety of areas. The group is working with over 80 rural communities as well as with residents of Fort Dauphin, the capital of Anosy.

Azafady offers a wide range of opportunities for international volunteers to visit, engage themselves in local culture, and get to know the lovely land and people of Madagascar. In their popular Pioneer internship program, volunteers typically construct latrines, build schools, share important environmental and health information in villages, and do forest conservation projects.

We strive with our volunteer programs to make sure that people get a genuine experience and can really engage on a grassroots level, and help local communities and on their terms. For us it's a two-way thing; we learn as much from people in Madagascar as they learn from us.

Azafady provides clean drinking water, health and sanitation infrastructure, and health education to isolated communities.

Every time a group of Pioneers completes a well in a community, it's saving lives every single day for decades to come.

Since 2002, the Madagascar government has been promoting the World Health Organization’s WASH program or Water Sanitation and Hygiene to end the illnesses that result from impure water and the lack of formal toileting facilities. The government has designated Azafady as the regional coordinator for the program’s implementation in the Anosy region.

Before eating we wash our hands, wash our hands before eating and our hands will be clean. After going to the toilet, we wash our hands, wash our hands after going to the toilet and we will all be healthy

Even if two of those kids go home and remember the song and wash their hands before they eat as a result of it, I think we’d all feel like it was worthwhile.

Teaching English as a second language classes is another way that Azafady is uplifting the people of Madagascar.

We try to have an hour lesson of English teaching, so giving them vocabulary, new grammar and ways to put it into a dialogue. And then the second half of the lesson I usually try to put some activities, simplifying ways of learning for them to then adapt and maybe to teach their children in the primary schools. It’s a nice feeling knowing that this is something we are doing that is sustainable. You are teaching teachers to then go on and teach.

English club is a once a week class that I help with at the local high school. It’s meant for kids of all levels at the high school, to just come in their spare time to get some extra English practicing, and it’s all speaking. This is probably my favorite part of the English teaching program as these students have so much potential and you can just see how brilliant they are and it sounds exciting working with kids that are really excited about learning.

Azafady also works to empower youth and women to be financially independent and thus have safer, more secure futures.

Azafady's sustainable livelihoods projects help people generate an income, particularly where this puts money straight into the hands of women, and improves nutrition and food security.

In Azafady’s nature conservation program, volunteers help document the precious species of this island nation.

The biodiversity monitoring and research is particularly important in this area. We have critically endangered species here. We have two species of palm and a gecko species that are found nowhere else on Earth.

It seems that there are quite a lot of endemic species to the Sainte Luce region and hopefully to the segment that we’re working in now. We found four so far in a week, not even a week actually, five days, that haven’t been described.

So hopefully we’ll be able to find some endemic ones that could potentially save the forest and the same with the reptiles. So it’s hard work because we really have to move through the forest and look under every branch and every leaf, but it’s exciting when you do find something.

Reza Pakravan is a British-Iranian financial analyst who in 2009 spent three weeks volunteering for Azafady in Madagascar. The experience left a deep impression on him.

Azafady’s program is all about local community. It’s heavily involved in the local community. We had a Malagasy lesson every day for one hour. And learning a little word to speak to people with their own language, just to say, "Halo" and "How are you?" opens so many doors. And you want people to listen to you, you want them to look at you as an example to probably carry a simple message of hygiene or some basic health issues.

And with learning a little bit of a language, that opens so many barriers. We had a chief of the village come and congratulate us. We were singing with the children, they organized a party for us, we were welcomed. We felt part of the whole village, that we had an area that we were camping over there. And our camp, we felt like we are permanent members of this little community here. And it was amazing, quite fascinating that you go around the town, and you see the Azafady sign everywhere.

You see a little bit of a touch of Azafady in a little development here, a tree nursery on the other side of the town, you see the center built by Azafady, the school built by Azafady. It’s just quite inspiring how people are responding, and how people respect the presence of Azafady there.

Mr. Pakravan truly loves Madagascar and wanted to raise money so that Azafady could build two more schoolhouses there. To publicize his wonderful endeavor to help the children, he and a friend undertook a 1,000 kilometer bike trip through the mountainous terrain of Nepal which they completed in an admirable 10 days.

Getting involved with Azafady has been an absolute pleasure, and getting to know these fantastic people definitely changed my life.

Learning of Reza Pakravan’s and Azafady’s high-minded goal and devotion to helping the Malagasy children, Supreme Master Ching Hai contributed US$25,000 to further the benevolent efforts to build more schools in the region.

We launched on Facebook and donations started flowing in. This recent donation from Supreme Master Ching Hai just completed our fundraising, it brought us to just over £37,000.

Thank you very much! I’m absolutely honored and I’m so pleased to be a vehicle to raise this amount for Azafady and thank you very much to Supreme Master who’s been so kind to us to give us this amount, and this amount would make a huge difference in what we’re trying to achieve.

Absolutely. I can only echo the words of Reza there. It’s an incredible, an incredible size donation to our work, and I would like to thank Supreme Master Ching Hai for this incredible sponsorship of this project, which is so desperately needed in Madagascar. It will make a huge difference to a large number of people and I’m sure that they would wish me to extend their gratitude as well. So, thank you all.

Mr. Pakravan’s ambitious bicycle journey brought international attention to Azafady, thus opening the door for more people to join in and lend a hand to help improve the lives of the Malagasy people. The good-hearted gentleman is now working on a new project to promote the organization.

Currently, I’m planning a new expedition. The plan is to cross the Sahara Desert on a non-motorized vehicle, which is a bicycle; the fastest crossing of the Sahara Desert. The bike ride starts from the village of Tan Tan in Morocco, which is the gateway to the Sahara and finishes at the Senegal River, which is the southern boundary of the Sahara Desert. This is supposed to be done in 13 days, which is an 11- day bike ride and two days rest. So, currently I’m working on this plan. The target is to raise £14,000 pounds for building a fourth school.

Reza’s work has helped us to get onto various newspapers around the world. It has helped to inspire people to think, “Well hang on, if this guy can do it, this is a normal guy, he’s obviously been inspired with the short time he spent in Madagascar, maybe I can do it as well.”

So, it’s not only had financial benefit, which of course is huge for us, the amount of money that he’s raised, but also there’s an unquantifiable benefit from the inspiration that’s going out to people, and hopefully the potential that people will try and follow in his footsteps.

How can each of us help preserve and sustain the unique, vibrant island of Madagascar?

…People can help us by learning a little about Madagascar and spreading the word about this beautiful jewel of an island, and raising awareness.

Once again, we’d like to express our appreciation to Reza Pakravan, Mark Jacobs, Pioneer volunteers and all others carrying out the splendid mission of Azafady by constructing schools and doing so many other beneficial things for Madagascar.

For more details about Azafady, please visit: www.Madagascar.co.uk

Kind viewers, we enjoyed your blessed company today on Good People, Good Works. Coming up next is The World Around Us after Noteworthy News. May your heart always be lit with Heavenly compassion and grace.