The Foko Blog Club initiative has completed 13 workshops and 4 (soon 5) locations in Madagascar. With co-founders mostly abroad or located in Antananarivo, it became a little complicated following the progress of the clubs and finding solutions to the challenges they each meet. So we came up with the logical decentralized strategy when giving the bloggers more  ”responsabilities” . This, of course means sharing more informations between members, communicate with each other openly (in transparency) and mostly have fun! These past weeks, you’ve been reading new posts from Tahina (http://www.iceclub-mada.com/lita/), Patrick (http://layshiyuu.wordpress.com/)and  Randy(http://essvacomm.wordpress.com/) who have kindly accepted to report on activities from Antananarivo, Tamatave and Antsirabe. As you can see : they have a lot to share ! 

Tahina from ICE in Tanaon RTA’s City News : 

It was not easy to gather all the FBC on a Monday afternoon with an unbearable heat inspite of the efforts made by Mr Pakysse on facebook and through sms since it’s a working day and the whole week was an exam period for some students. We were 6 people to enter Teknet’s training room at 3:00 pm and later joined by Dago, Moonand Nhari. Monday’s workshop was a new adventure for Foko, a discovery for the 2 brand new comers Feno(ICE) and Tsiry (IST), a reminder and blog-update time for the current bloggers and a great experience for everybody, I mean as a shooting.

Diana Chamia on RTA City News 

Patrick from Tamatave on BUEC’s latest activities and on Facebook and periodically his blog : 

Here in Tamatave, we are 6 bloggers: Cunie, Violance, Melinda(clairsttuburn), Theophile, Hanitra, and I, and I would like to keek this number. As you know we are in vocation so Melinda and Violance went already in the place where there is no network, and Hanitra will go soon, but I’m telling you that at least once(1) a week that I’m with them but they always got problem to blog. So I’m obliged to assist them. And every day I remind them to prepare their articles for the favorite festivities. Cunie and Theo will post theirs probably at the end of this week or in the beginning of this next week. HOPE. Now our group plained to assit an iternational congress here in Tamatave on this december. And I try to have the camera in that time. The most problem is about the connexion, it very slow, and as we are in vocation so the University Cyber is closed (ndlr: after meeting in Antananarivo, Theo and Patrick came up with the idea to schedule BUEC workshops at their University’s Cyber where connexion is less expensive). The second problem is we don’t know yet how to upload a video and a voice. But Stéphane will be here in Tamatave during the Christmas and we are going to profit to learn it. Now I’m going to post my favorite festivity. And don’t worry they will post theirs sooner Ciao, T.T.F.N

Opening ceremony of International Student Congress at University of Tamatave

Randy Donny just reported on ESSVA’s latest activities even if they’ve been a little busy celebrating the graduation of their 7th promotion in Antsirabe !!

Last week, we made a list of reportages to produce and we'll see the results very soon. Otherwise, thanks for the technica support. We are going to share the connexions bu we're also thinking about getting internet permanently at school. We're discussing about  it right now in the Moramora way!

 “Misandratra” promotion from ESSVA

With two English clubs associated to FOKO, BUEC (Barikadimy's United English Club from Tamatave) and ICE (I'm crazy about English in Tananarive) more posts are now published in English (exactly 176 today). Malagasy along with French were the two official languages in Madagascar before the addition recently of English. It is not always an easy task promoting its use with French having been imposed during last century colonial era and Malagasy, particularly Merina dialect, being common in writing and speaking in every the regions. In fact a large proportion of Malagasy bloggers are only publishing in their mother thongue to keep the culture alive on internet and to improve the vocabulary with the addition of new terms related to technology. But how are things doing back in Madagascar? What are the challenges? Let's read from ICE and BUEC :

The Challenge of Spelling in English from ICE Club website

November 21st, 2008, there was an interesting Friday Talk session at American Cultural Center ( ACC) from 12:30 to 2 p.m. During that day ;the topic was ” The Challenge of Spelling in English”; presented by the Regional English language Officer Eran Williams.
How well can we master the english language. Is it enough just knowing how to speak; read ;and write. Sometimes even when we write we get stuck in writing some words. The problem is that we don't know how to spell it correctly. So we end up ; misspelling it. (…)

(…)Why can't we have our own Spelling Bee competition here in english or Malagasy or french. It won't be a bad idea. 

in the comments section Andry adds :

I sincerely believe that we, as “English lovers”, should get back to reading books, writting letters with a paper and a pen, listening to radio plays, and discussing topics which really matter. I think that if we take the challenge, we will all benefit from that.

In the Eastern coast, their friends at BUEC are discussing the same echues :

WHY ENGLISH? The creators remarc that there are a lot of students after they got their BACC degree and they have to go at University, there they had no opportinuty to encrease their knowledge in term of English. And as e know that there is no way to follow English subject here in Tamatave because it’s doesn’t exist yet. At the same time we know the importance of English nowaday so we decided to create one club, is the place where the students can increase their knowledge on English.

he (Mr White, the newly elected BUEC president) really want all of the member can express English correctly, but that needs a lot of effort from eah students but that not enough if there is no teacher or some tape or CD video, to teach us what exactly the student must do, also very diffiocult to attend the aims.

Meeting time at BUEC

Moonlight shares about the different social activities at English Clubs : 

 their club MLEC ( Municipal Library English Club is divided into comities: Tourism comity; Youth Social Comity; Fundraising Comity. So if you want to join their club, you have to choose a comity. Like all other clubs , they have other activities like camping; picnics,…… 

BUEC members

And finally let's show our support to the pioneers by posting hundred of comments on their blogs especially with the come back of Tamatave's bloggers :

http://clairesttuburn.wordpress.com/ ,
 http://violance.wordpress.com/,
 http://layshiyuu.wordpress.com/,