WHAT WE DO
How we work and the 4 key value
Our Team works across North West Madagascar, and especially in the islands of Nosy Komba, Nosy Mitsio and Nosy Be.
In these islands, we strive to build an inclusive infrastructure of human rights and to forge healthy and empowered communities, in line with the 2030 SDGs. Our programmes span from Water, Sanitation & Hygiene – the core foundation of our work – to Nutrition, Social Entrepreneurship. We also run Training, Creative practice and Sport projects.
All our programmes are evidence-based and designed by development professionals and in partnership with academic centres of excellence.
In line with our core values all our projects are carried out for local people and by local people in respect of their environment and culture. To us, it is fundamental that all programmes respond to issues and needs flagged by the communities. Moreover, since our Founder and Director is fluent in the local language, we make sure that constantant dialogue and mutual understanding stand at the bases of any intervention.
Our approach is consistently bottom up, evidence based, cross-sectoral and long-term.
Through our projects and programmes we seek to bring positive change in four main areas: health and wellbeing, women’s empowerment, skills development and financial sustainability.
Health improvements
and well-being
In Madagascar , most deaths are still linked to preventable diseases.
H4O long-term prevention programmes aim to improve public health conditions as well as respond to global outbreaks of life-threatening WASH related diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever, hepatitis and COVID-19.
Women's empowerment
Help for Optimism works with women and for women. As a matter of fact, H4O in Madagascar is 100% run by trained teams of local women.
The approach is based on sharing knowledge and expertise, ensuring access to resources and creating a gender-inclusive dialogue to train and shape women leaders. The interventions are designed to be gender-responsive infrastructures that reduce exposure to gender-based violence by improving privacy and menstrual hygiene.
Skills development
The role of H4O within the framework of Skills development is to train community members on specific sectors through Training of Trainers (ToT) activities. With this objective, H4O sets Community Management Committees (CMC) in each community that benefit from the projects and train new Junior professionals in charge of O&M.
Financial sustainability
Madagascar’s economy is barely self-sufficient and it mainly relies on exporting raw material, tourism, foreign investments and international aid. To date, there are almost no local enterprises supporting the local economy by creating jobs and processing local resources.
