A Maltese mother and daughter are scrambling to collect enough funds to inject into an orphanage in Madagascar, which is at risk of closing down due to COVID-19.

Christina Lejman and her mother Laura run the Arnaud Guesry Foundation, a Malta-registered NGO which in 2012 opened its residential centre for orphaned, abandoned, neglected or abused children in Madagascar.

The project expanded over the years and, for the first time since its inception, the centre is having to turn away children who need help because like many others, it is feeling the pinch of the COVID-19 pandemic which had a serious toll on its finances. The foundation requires more than €82,000 a year to run the home and the satellite projects.

Christina Lejman said they are seeking to raise €20,000 to keep their philanthropic operation rolling on for the next couple of months.

“If we close down, more than 30 children presently in our care would be taken to another centre some 1,500 kilometres away and they will lose all contact with family and community,” she said.

La Maison d’Arnaud houses children aged between just three months and 12 years.

The children are not only offered a family home but an education, nutrition, health services and psycho-social support.

They also benefit from the care of 20 full-time members of staff including nannies, cooks, security officers, teachers, volunteers, social workers and administrators.

A typical classroom with the flag of Malta flying high.

Apart from the home, which is the NGO’s primary operation, it also has several other community projects in the area, including a prison support project, malnutrition rehabilitation and a local hot meal project, among others.

Lejman explained how if Madagascar women are jailed, usually for petty crimes and have nowhere to leave their children, they also end up behind bars and have to share their mother’s ration of food.

One of the projects the NGO runs is to look after the children while their mother is serving time, with whom she will be then reunited when freed.  Moreover, it runs a specialist malnutrition programme in coordination with local hospitals and offers crisis relief for abandoned, exploited and severely abused children.

The home is named after seven-year-old Arnaud Guesry, who died in a car accident almost three decades ago.

He was the son of founder and former president Pierre Rene Guesry who was driven to contribute to the protection and development of orphaned children and who chose the province of Diana in Madagascar as the charity’s home.

He opted for Madagascar due to the country’s increasing poverty, child mortality rate as well as the sexual abuse of minors.

Over 70 per cent of the population lives on less than $2 a day as Madagascar is ranked among the poorest countries in the world not in conflict.

Lejman said the home’s garden keeps the kitchen running in terms of fresh produce and its hens lay 90 eggs a day, some of which are sold in the village to raise extra cash.

The organisation needs the funds to continue paying its staff. However, the pandemic has seen costs increase by almost 20 per cent.

“We are trying hard to navigate through these tough times, but the hard reality is setting in... if we don’t manage to secure a serious injection of funds, we will soon be forced to close the orphanage,” she said.

La Maison d’Arnaud, in the province of Diana, Madagascar, provides care for 30 children.

“For the first time since we opened our doors, we are being forced to say no.” She noted that funds for which the NGO usually applies through Malta government programmes were not issued in 2020.

Only €6,000 of the sum required has been collected so far and the NGO has set up a crowdfunding page to raise awareness and collect money that will see them keeping the orphanage open.

Donations

Donations can be made online on www.zaar.com.mt/projects/la-maison-darnaud/, http://www.arnaudguesryfoundation.org/donation/ or through the bank accounts: Arnaud Guesry Foundation, Bank of Valletta, Ibraġ Road, Ibraġ, SWQ 2030, Malta; Account number: 4002172776-2; BIC: VALLMTMT; IBAN: MT30VALL 22013000000040021727762.