Meals2Heal Fundraiser

The Madagascar Ankizy (MAF) is a non-profit organization administered through the Stony Brook Foundation whose goal is to provide education and health care to children living in remote areas of Madagascar.

In response to the destitution encountered during a visit to rural communities of Mahajanga Province, Distinguished Service Professor from Stony Brook University (SBU), Dr. David Krause founded MAF in 1998. ‘Ankizy’ means ‘children’ in the Malagasy language. The goals of the MAF are to provide education and healthcare to the children of remote areas of Madagascar by building schools and providing dental treatment through annual clinics. MAF is administered through the Stony Brook Foundation, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit education corporation established in 1965 to advance the mission of SBU. In less than a decade, MAF can claim the following successes:

1.  Building three elementary schools, which have provided formal education to hundreds of Malagasy children;

2.      Establishment of annual health care clinics, staffed by SBU medical and dental professionals and students;

3.    The drilling of wells and initiation of water disinfection programs through the use of ceramic filters, with assistance from Rotary International;

4.  Initiation of an arts and crafts industry in a village starving because the primary occupation, wood-cutting (for charcoal production), is no longer feasible since the forest has been drastically depleted;

5.  Renovation of an orphanage in the provincial capital city of Mahajanga;

6.  Initiation of community-wide education programs in nutrition, hygiene, and sexual health;

7. Establishment of sister-institution status between the SBU School of Dental Medicine (SBUSDM) and Institut d’Odontologie-Stomatologie Tropicale de Madagascar (IOSTM; www.univ-mahajanga.mg/formations/iostm/index.htm), the only dental school in Madagascar;

8.    Initiation of a program through which used and surplus hospital equipment and supplies are shipped from hospitals in the United States to those in Madagascar and from the SBUSDM to the IOSTM.