Salaam Foundation takes their humanitarian aid to Madagascar

One will often see the Salaam Foundation van driving through the streets of Robertsham and neighbouring communities doing its usual meat and vegetable deliveries to vulnerable families in the area.

The NGO has now extended its global footprint of assistance to the neighbouring African island of Madagascar, which has been suffering from a serious drought for the last six years.

The organisation successfully delivered approximately 35 tons of basic food essentials to some of the most remote and hard-to-reach villages on the island.

“We have a lot to be thankful for as South Africans. The challenges in places like Madagascar far exceed what we are accustomed to at home. The roads are a nightmare. Whole trucks and cars can fit into the potholes and most of the tar has been eroded. The villages we visited are in extreme poverty,” said Salaam Foundation director, Azhar Vadi, who was on the trip.

Experts have blamed changing weather patterns on climate change as very little to no rain has been falling in the south of Madagascar. During the peak of the drought, people ate cactus leaves and even the hide and skin of dead animals just to survive. Earlier this year they had some rain but it is now again it is very dry.

Basic hygiene is difficult to maintain as there simply is not enough water and this leads to further challenges for the communities. Water wells are often salty and unusable and people have to often travel over 10km to fetch containers of fresh water.

“Madagascar is a forgotten land. It’s not in the media spotlight, very few people are travelling since Covid-19, it’s cut off from the mainland of Africa by the ocean and nobody cares about people here,” said Vadi.

Future plans include the delivery of farming tools, pesticides and seeds to improve the chances of reaping a successful crop with the little rain that they hope will fall.

To assist in this project visit www.salaamfoundation.com