NGO Support / Tany maitso Madagascar is among the world's poorest countries. As such people's day-to-day survival is dependent upon natural resource use. Most Malagasy never have an opportunity to find jobs from official sector outside agriculture, they must live off the land that 
surrounds them making use of the natural resources. Their poverty costs the country and the world through the loss of the island's endemic biodiversity. In other words conservation in Madagascar depends on the human well-being especially in the peripheral 
zone of natural forests. Despite efforts brought by many actors on environment the objective which is to have healthy ecosystems have poverty eliminated and sustainable use of natural resources and forest in the future is still far from being reached. The 
objective of Tany Maitso is to contribute to reaching this objective by combining development and conservation. The idea is to enhance the well-being of the local people who are dependent on natural resources living around the protected forest areas in Ran
omafana and Farafangana and the forest corridor area between Ranomafana and Andringitra National Park and simultaneously protect biodiversity.Tany Maitso project has two main purposes: 1/ poverty alleviation in the project villages that will be indicated b
y enhanced livelihood options more variable diet increased literacy rate empowerment of women and improvement of health in the village and 2/ biodiversity conservation that will be promoted through reduction of forest use and through supporting tree planti
ng in each village.  The project has promoted the creation of an association in each village planting of trees such as Jatropha and Moringa vegetables planting beekeeping rat control in the rice plantation through CTBS method and literacy training for adul
ts. However the associations are not fully independent yet and more work is needed for achieving sustainable results.Thus the following activities were planned: 1/ association support and capacity building 2/ tree planting 3/ Literacy training in Tolongoin
a and 4/ market study to support marketing of the products.