Je voudrais remercier tous ceux et celles qui ont contribué à mes deux projets de Noel avec le Centre NRJ, ou je fais du bénévolat depuis mon arrivée à Tana. Grâce à vous, les préparations avancent très vite, aujourd'hui j'acheterai la peinture et trouverai une couturière. En voici quelques détails:

Premièrement, avec Andréanne, j'ai monté un projet de peinture murale (ça aura lieu ce samedi, le 13 déc.). Les salles de classe du centre sont très vides et grises, et les petits y passent tous les jours de la semaine. Le centre vient d’approuver notre projet de peinture murale, on est une petite équipe, et les adolescents du centre pourront aussi donner un coup de main. On a pensé à de petites touches (animaux, fleurs, etc), je joins un montage Photoshop dans la section Photos pour vous en donner une idée, et devrais avoir de vraies photos la semaine prochaine.

Deuxième projet: Fête de Noel, le 19 déc. 2008.  Les enfants s’y préparent depuis bientôt un mois, ils ont appris des danses et chansons. Vous trouverez des photos de leurs danses ds la section Photos. Il y avait deux façons de s’y impliquer: en amenant quelque chose à manger pour la fête, ou en contribuant à l’achat des costumes, soit Père Noel, Marie, Joseph, mages, anges, ensembles de danse, etc. Les costumes seront gardés et utilisés à chaque année par le centre, pour la même fête. On en a une partie déjà, un costume coûte environ 5$, alors si ça vous intéresse vous pouvez aussi contribuer!


Comme c'est moi et Andréanne qui achetons la peinture, la nourriture pour le souper de Noel, et les tissus pour les costumes, on peut vous garantir que l'argent que vous avez envoyé ou voudriez envoyer sera bien utilisé. Tout montant est bienvenu, vous pourriez me le rendre à mon retour à Montréal.

Encore une fois merci, en mon nom, et celui des petits!




Le Centre Énergie (ou "NRJ"-Nouveau Relais des Jeunes) agit en faveur de la formation-réinsertion des enfants abandonnés et orphelins de la capitale. Il y a à Antananarivo grand nombre d'enfants et jeunes adolescents livrés à eux-mêmes, marginalisés, exclus de tout cycle scolaire ou programme de formation, qui survivent péniblement de vagabondage ou d'assistance. On y distingue deux types d’enfats de la rue: les enfants abandonnés par leurs familles ou les orphelins, et les enfants en contact avec leurs familles, mais qui vivent tout de même dans la rue.

Le centre a été conçu et construit par les enfants, et 250 enfants sont suivis au centre ou dans la rue, par trois types de services:

Le gîte de nuit, qui a été construit par les jeunes du centre, permet aux enfants de dormir en lieu sûr.

L'animation en journée auprès des enfants. Une centaine d'enfants passent la journée au centre NRJ où le déjeuner leur est fourni. Ils sont accueillis et suivent des cours d'alphabétisation et un programme parascolaire adapté, leur permettant d'apprendre à leur rythme et d'être écoutés et aidés. C'est la partie dans laquelle je suis impliquée, j'y donne des cours de dessin à toutes les semaines.

Le centre de formation. Les jeunes adolescents qui vivent et dorment au centre NRJ suivent des ateliers de menuiserie, poterie, construction de bâtiments et autres. Ces ateliers sont animés par des formateurs qualifiés et permettent aux jeunes de découvrir leurs compétences et d'apprendre un métier. C’est ainsi que NRJ a pu grandir sans l'aide de salariés, les jeunes étant les seuls acteurs de leur destin. Depuis, certains, formés au centre, y reviennent comme chefs de chantier et formateurs.

This week i've started my drawing courses at Centre Énergie, in Madagascar's capital.
It is a personal project, nothing to do with the international cooperation program that brought me here, through the Canadian government.

Centre Énergie is a wonderful project that functions with donations but also tries to become self-sufficient. It is a center for abandoned children and teenagers living on the streets. They sleep, eat, and get schooling at the center, and teenagers get job trainings (pottery, furniture making, building, etc). They make their own school benches and furniture (with materials donated by Unicef), are re-building the school (as a flood destroyed it last year), sell their pottery in fairs, and grow animals and plants.

The 34 children that I give drawing classes to do have parents, but are very poor, most of them don't even have shoes. They are all amazing, very curious and funny, and the majority are very good at drawing. As soon as I compliment one of them, 5 or 6 others ask me if their coloring is as good, and they are sooooo glad when I tell them it is!

I work with a teenager who translates and who is excellent at what he does, very patient and nice; himself, he lives at the center.

Madagascar is one of the 10 poorest countries in the world, and a lot of families simply cannot afford to feed their children. That is why they are sent to beg for money in the streets, and many of them end up stealing, recuperating and selling objects, doing drugs, etc. These children have no access to schooling or job training, and it is why the Centre NRJ was created.

And speaking of jobs, the IGM's founder just received a bursary fund from Tiffany's, allowing Malagasy people to be trained at IGM, in gemmology and lapidary. I described the Centre NRJ to him, ad he immediatelly offered a scholarship to one of their best students, as well as bus fares to and from the Institute. Given that the Institut de Gemmologie de Madagascar is the most important gemmology center in Africa, their certificate is a sure path to a good job. And it so happens that the Center has three teenagers who are trained in furniture making and who had to quit their newly-found jobs, as they weren't even paid enough to pay their bus fare, so one of them will be getting an IGM & Tiffany's scholarship.

You can see pictures of the children in the photo section, which I will keep updating with their drawings soon. In the same section, there are images of a little boy that I draw with during lunchtime, he's 3 and his mother brings him to work everyday (she's the cleaning lady). I can tell he's never held a pen before, but I'm sure I'll manage to teach him a few things in the next 4 moths.

The ‘Sidewalks' photo album is a succinct depiction of Antananarivo’s sidewalks and of the people who work there.

Here people walk in the street, which is pretty safe considering the low speed of vehicles. Sidewalks are used mainly for commercial purposes: people sitting on the ground behind small plastic or fabric sheets on which they display everything from food to sewing machine pieces and old shoes. Given the pollution (cars pass by really closely) and the heat, it is a very sad thing to see. But it gets worse: most of these salespeople are women, and they all have babies or children with them. The more fortunate ones have small tables for their merchandise under which their babies can sleep, but most have to carry them around, have them sleep on the ground, and even breastfeed them while they work.

Since I started work at the Gemology Institute, I have also been reading on the same phenomenon, applied to the mining industry. There are way too many children here working long hours in gold or precious stones mines, simply because their parents cannot leave them behind when they go to work. Most mines are far away from villages, and there are no schools around. So children start helping out their parents, and slowly it becomes their job (children do not receive a payment for their work, but their parents do get a compensation). There are several NGOs and companies involved in finding solutions to this problem, and there seem to be many jewelry retailers who only deal with ‘clean’ gold and gems, and can trace their jewelry to mines where workers benefit from a minimum of security and dignity.

Below is a list of jewelry retailers and others, in case any of you are looking for gold or diamond jewelry, or know people who might. I believe that there is no other industry in which the two ends of the production-consumer chain are more contrasted. It is an industry based on cruelty and abuse, which caters to our most superficial needs. It is hard to understand why people find wearing fur offensive, but still continue to buy jewelry carelessly …..

Because I wouldn’t want to end this on a negative note, I have to mention that in 2007, a few international jewelry retailers convened the ‘Ethical Jewelry Summit’, in Washington, and that public demand for ethical jewelry is rising.

Earthworks, CASM, ARM, Jewelers of America, DDI, Rapaport, PAC, FLO, De Beers, Ethical Metalsmiths, AngloGold Ashanti, BHP Billiton, Ben Bridge Jeweler, Cartier, De Beers Group, Hoover and Strong, Newmont, Rapaport Group, Rio Tinto, Tiffany & Co, CASM, Toby Pomeroy.

For all of you who wrote to me saying they were ready for some less touristic pics of Antananarivo, I have uploaded a few in the 'Streets of Tana' album.
It's a very delicate thing, taking pictures of people around the city, because they either come to me for money if I look at them for too long, or I feel too intrusive photographing them withought asking for permission. There is also a question of dignity, as I am sure they would rather not be photographed while living in the streets, getting warm around improvised fires, etc, but i feel that i should take advantage of my stay here to make others aware of the poverty in Tana. So the compromise I have found is taking snapshots around the city, from the cab (which doesn't give me any room for composition, angles, etc, but does instead provide an authentic image of the reality here).

The next step would be pictures of Tana children, there are very many of them, living on the streets, begging, looking for food, sleeping or playing. I haven't been able to take any pics of them yet, it's tough to see them live like that. You will surelly be touched  when you see the pics,  the children are very beautiful, and almost always smiling.