MANDIMBY, 22 YEARS
Malagasy teacher
Former CERES student from the 2008 school year
For the past 11 years, IECD and the Madagascan association PROMES have been combating school failure among young rural students in the region of Fianarantsoa by supporting them from junior school through to senior school with the CERES program. Mandimby is one of the students from the 2008 academic year. From the 1st year to the final year, the programâs personal and global support allowed him to successfully overcome the steps despite moments of doubt. Now, he wants to offer young people in difficulty the same chance as him.
âThanks to my integration into the Alakamisy-Ambohimaha business incubator, one of the six CERES bush centers supporting students from the 1st year to the final year of junior school, I was able to obtain my BEPC and succeed three admission exams to the best high schools in Fianarantsoa! At the end of every week, I went home to help my mother, who looks after my three sisters and two brothers on her own since my fatherâs death in 2008. There have been many difficulties, but I made my poverty a weapon of success and it proved to be effective, since I obtained my baccalaureate with merit. “
Because he was supported in his studies, once he graduated, Mandimby decided, in turn, to help the most underprivileged:
 âI followed the Initial Teacher Training for junior school teachers, designed and coordinated by CERES since September 2014. I learned a great deal about child and adolescent psychology and all the skills needed to become a teacher. The training is also certified by the Institut National de Formation Professionnelle (INFP), which helped me to find work easily: in September 2016, I started teaching Madagascan in the CERES Preparatory Year.
I thank the CERES teams for having pushed me to continue to the end of my studies. I also thank my mother who has never stopped encouraging me and supporting me morally and financially by selling some potatoes and cassava. I am proud of myself and I can now help her to finance my brothers and sistersâ studies in order to ensure them a better future. “
