The Andaobato Center which belongs to the Manantenasoa Community in Fianarantsoa (Madagascar) was opened in February 2014 to welcome children with psychomotor disabilities. Children come everyday, 5 days a week.

Currently, the center has 52 members, 35 of which are boys and 17 girls, aged 5 to 17.

Our aims:

• Develop the potential of those children and for some of them, encourage school integration;
• If possible, help a few of them gain some autonomy in their daily life;
• Relieve the families living with a disabled child and no longer capable of taking on parental responsibility to support the rest of the family. Too often, they are single mothers...

We do not have much space in our current premises; in this jubilee year of the 400th anniversary of the Vincentian charism, we truly want to “expand”, with the construction of an annexe, to create a workshop to develop manual work for the older young (sewing, basketwork), as well as a refectory for the children.

 “Charity is inventive to infinity” used to say Vincent de Paul

This is why we dare to call on the donors of the Rosalie Projects. Indeed, this project is essential with the rising of young disabled, and cannot be fulfilled without an outside help!

Our center only exists thanks to the donations that complete the small contributions paid by the parents. The educators’ monthly allowances are paid by the community, along with benefactors.

Family involvement!

Despite the poverty of this region and the difficulties of these families, we want these disabled children to remain integrated in their family environment...The families living close to the center drop off their children and pick them up. For the others, a bus (courtesy of a German organization) picks up children in the morning and droves them off in the evening, with a small contribution to pay diesel.

We guide the families through the educational care of their child and ask them —according to their usually rather modest means— financial or in-kind contribution for the canteen (lunch) and the after-school snack. Annually, at the end of the school year, the parents organize an exhibition-sale of handicraft made by the children. This year, they collected €628 for the renovation of the existing building.

A day at the Center

In the pictures, you can see that the children welcomed have moderate to severe disabilities...

Here, they learn to live in society and to acquire the basic gestures and behaviours of a growing child according to their comprehension and mobility.

 Therefore, the care given by the seven members of the team, including a nun, is diverse: 

• Primary care, education to cleanliness, food aid;
• Motor and intellectual stimulation, speech therapy, language development;
• According to their capacities, children learn to read and write, to colour, and as they grow up, to make small handicraft and sewing products;
• Gardening with the older children;
• Massage and physiotherapy sessions when specialists come (from time to time);
• All members take care of the children: they all act as teacher or mother when it comes to cleanliness, and amuse them during the breaks.

With the creation of new spaces, young disabled will be able to learn simple jobs and be useful to society: basketwork, basic carpentry, handicraft, sewing or gardening.

The team and the families work to make these growing disabled children as independent as possible, so that they are not a burden for their family and society.

You contribute to this project by supporting it,

thank you!

and in Malagasy: : MISAOTRA BETSAKA ANAREO !