Volunteer with Mission Madagascar
Hi, I'm David Reay, and I'd like to invite you to join me in a life changing experience to assist children in Madagascar. During my missionary service in Madagascar I became personally acquainted with suffering on a daily basis.
One typical day noxious fumes from a neighborhood dump site attracted my attention. I looked on to a rain soaked mound of garbage that consumed much of the muddy street. There it was that my heart sank deep inside my chest and I immediately became ashamed of the clean white shirt and (though wet and muddy) comfortable shoes that covered my feet from the elements. There were two young boys wading through the filth with bare feet and not even a shirt to cover their backs from the rain. Their mother awaited them patiently as they found a few of the remaining banana and potato peels that would serve as their humble and likely only meal of the day. I had to fight back the tears that day as we continued on our way.
A research expedition in 2004 led me back to Madagascar, and instilled in me a desire to help in a sustainable and ongoing manner. Some of the problems currently facing children in Madagascar:
- There persists an economic plague that has claimed the lives of many innocent children. Since 2002 disease and starvation have plagued the capital of Antananarivo, and the millions of people who live there.
- The average family income is just $250 per year.
- It is estimated that 44.8% of the population is under the age of 15.
- The increase of prostitution and forced labor among Madagascar's poverty stricken youth has become an increasingly terrible plight over the past few years.
- Orphanages depend on private and some governmental support, it has become more and more difficult to meet their needs as resources continue to decrease.
- Many children suffer from Typhoid, Hepatitis A, Malaria, and even the plague.
- Many suffer from easily treated pathogens and many children are dying without access to simple vaccines.
Our goal is to lend aid to some of these suffering children.
We will work with a previously established orphanage that is currently sleeping over 150 children in just 30 beds; and work in vaccination clinics that are being established in cooperation with a group of service physicians in Madagascar who will be donating their time and resources.
This effort is being launched with the design to reinforce economic self-reliance and provide simple resources and vaccines to a suffering population of infants and adolescents.
The next volunteer expedition is scheduled for May. If you are interested in becoming a team member for this trip, please contact me, David Reay at missionmadagascar@yahoo.com
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 Madagascar
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 No Shoes
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 Child Labor
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 Orphanage
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 2 Children In Morandava
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