A Vocational Hotel School in Madagascar.

Despite the recent spike in COVID cases on the island, the Vocational Hotel School in Nosy Be has opened its doors. We welcomed our first cohort of students on March 1 and the last 4 weeks have been exciting and positively charged.

This soft opening has allowed us to run a pilot program, and the first cohort just completed their 4th week. We see progress being made every day. This pilot program includes in-person classes run by Annick Ramisamihantanirina, Claudine Rakotoarisoa and our chef Hamba Jean Pedale. Our project director, Josoa Andrianarisaona, is driving the program with full enthusiasm.

We have also implemented a series of zoom classes with various professors and trainers including Chef William Groult, Chief Trainer of Ecole Ducasse in France, Ilavarasi Raja, an expert in Hospitality, Isabelle Boucherot, teaching effective Tourism Etiquette, Sheena Connolly, helping improve our students English conversational skills, Orsi Urban, heading our career and internship program, Catherine Gilbert, our chief editor and we also have Sanaz Hanke and Barunes Padhy for our students' computer and technological advancement. Our faculty is very dedicated in teaching and very eager in pushing the students further. We are very blessed to have them on board.

Students are learning fast and they show their determination in learning all aspects of the hospitality industry. In particular students are also very excited about cooking classes conducted via zoom by chef William of Ecole Ducasse (Paris, France) as you can see in the video below. We are particularly proud of our partnership with Ecole Ducasse and we are sure that this pilot program will grow in strength over the years.

In other news, we continue to improve the quality of our premises and our full-time maintenance team has been busy repairing and improving the electrical and plumbing networks. In particular, we completed building a water reservoir for the school on the campus so that the issue of water shortage could be resolved once and for all.