In Madagascar's often-overlooked Anosy region, access to clean water and basic sanitation is far from guaranteed — but SEED Madagascar is changing that, one school and one community at a time.
Where the Need Begins
In Madagascar's Anosy region, the numbers are stark. Only 26% of the population has access to basic water services. Just 3% have access to basic sanitation. And nearly nine out of ten public primary schools in the country lack any WASH infrastructure at all. For children, the consequences are immediate — waterborne illnesses like cholera and typhoid fever are among the leading causes of death for those under five. Getting to school is hard enough in rural Anosy. Getting to school healthy, and staying that way, is harder still.
SEED Madagascar has been working in this region for over two decades, not as an outside organization parachuting in solutions, but as a long-term partner embedded in the communities it serves. Their approach is patient, practical, and built to last.
Programme Sekoly sits at the heart of SEED's current WASH work. Recognizing that schools are often the most consistent point of contact children have with structured support, SEED has focused on building proper water and sanitation facilities directly into the schools they construct and renovate across the region. Clean water points, improved latrines, handwashing stations — the basics that much of the world takes for granted, delivered where children gather every day.
But infrastructure alone doesn't change behavior. Alongside the construction work, SEED runs hygiene education sessions and community training, working with teachers, parents, and local leaders to ensure that better facilities translate into better habits. Communities aren't passive recipients — they're active participants in building and sustaining the systems that serve them. That philosophy of working alongside rather than doing for runs through everything SEED does.
The goal SEED is working toward is both simple and ambitious: a future where every child in Anosy can learn in an environment that doesn't put their health at risk. Where clean water is a given, not a privilege. Where a child's education isn't cut short by a preventable illness. Progress in a region as remote and resource-constrained as Anosy is never fast, but it is steady — school by school, community by community, one well-trained teacher and one functional latrine at a time.
SEED Madagascar is a small organization that has chosen to go deep rather than wide, focusing everything on one corner of one island that the world too often overlooks. The work is quiet, unglamorous, and essential.
SEED Madagascar is a member of Rugged Compass. Learn more and support their work here.
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