It was a long, exhausting, and extremely intense mission in the south of Madagascar. We left on December 29, traveled through the night, crossed the capital, and then faced three very difficult days on the road heading south. We spent December 31 in a small village along the way: a simple, essential New Year’s Eve, far from everything, as often happens during missions.

Once we arrived, the activities immediately focused on two main areas, alongside many targeted interventions that arose from direct observation of needs.

The first area of work was medical and health-related, with a strong focus on malnutrition. The local doctor we work with regularly examined people from the four villages throughout the entire mission: for two or three days in each village, sitting under a tree with an assistant, he welcomed anyone in need of care. It was an extremely demanding effort. More than twenty people—children and adults—were hospitalized; some have already returned home, while others are still receiving treatment. As always, our local team will continue to follow up on their cases now that we have returned.

Alongside medical visits, we repeated the nutritional screening for children aged 0 to 5, which is carried out every three months even when we are not present. We distributed therapeutic milk and specific protein-rich foods, following international protocols. We found children in better condition than in the past, which is an important and encouraging sign. At the same time, we identified difficulties in food management: some families, despite having received clear instructions, tended to share the therapeutic food among all their children. For this reason, we strengthened our educational work with mothers, once again explaining how crucial it is that these products be given exclusively to malnourished children.

In one of the villages, we met a five-year-old blind child who had already been identified during the previous mission, but whose situation we had not fully grasped in its severity. He was living in conditions of neglect, also due to the stigma that affects families with children with disabilities. With the consent of his relatives, we accompanied him to a special school: today he is cared for, supported, and properly nourished. It is a hard story, and it is very difficult for me to talk about these cases, but I also know how necessary it is. These children deserve a chance, and we are there for this reason—so that they may have the opportunity to live a better life, as much as possible.

The second major area of intervention concerned access to food and water. As always, we distributed large quantities of rice in the four villages. The water tanker, which has been visiting weekly for almost three years, continued its service during our presence.

We also completed important work on water channels and reservoirs, expanding the former and enlarging the latter where they already existed. In one of the four villages, we dug two new reservoirs. All of this work was coordinated remotely by Giulio, the technician who has been working with us for a long time, and carried out by a local company using labor from the villages themselves. This means not only improved infrastructure, but also income for the families involved.

A brief but intense rainfall during the mission allowed us to see the effectiveness of these interventions firsthand: the water collected in the reservoirs, and children immediately used it to drink and wash. Very little water, but incredibly precious.

In the village where the school we renovated is located, we distributed school kits: backpacks, notebooks, pens, and colors. It was one of the most beautiful moments of the mission, and the images tell the children’s joy better than any words ever could. In that same school, we also fixed the guttering and connected the roof to a large water collection tank, which has now been fully restored. Every rainfall is now a resource.

All of this work has a clear direction: not only responding to emergencies, but creating the conditions for these communities to restart over time. Water, health, nutrition, education. The next step will be to try to revive forms of agriculture and livestock farming. We are already working to make this development possible.

It was a demanding, intense, and necessary mission.