News & Updates

oloNala co-founder Rasolo and Ranomafana Nature Center Manager Jocelyn Randrianasoloniaina have brought the creative practice of nature journaling to the classroom! With their sketchbooks and colored pencils in hand, the students split into groups to practice observing and sketching the plant and animal life around them. The first observations included which trees in the area were fruiting, what insects were present in the garden, and how many legs a spider has!

Nature journaling is a playful and mindful practice that not only lets students express themselves creatively, but embraces their curiosity about the natural world and complements the lessons they take part in every Saturday at the Nature Center. 

We're back with an update from the Ranomafana Nature Center! With your help, we've been able to hire a local carpenter to build the storage cubbies the Center's teachers requested to house their educational materials. One shelf will hold the students' brand new nature journaling supplies - sketchbooks and a set of colored pencils for every child. To top it off, we're working with the Wild Wonder Foundation to create a Malagasy translation of their popular "Quick Start Guide to Nature Journaling" zine, which will be printed and made accessible to educators and students in the wider Ranomafana area. Check back in soon - we'll be launching the Center's nature journaling program at the end of the month!

With Rasolo back in Madagascar and an official 501(c)(3) status to boot, we're excited to start the year off with an official partnership with the Ranomafana Nature Center. We've been working with the Center's Manager Jocelyn Randrianasoloniaina to determine how oloNala can best support and incorporate art into their ongoing education work. To start, we'll be furnishing their classroom space with storage cubbies and filling them with an assortment of art supplies available for students and teachers alike. The lack of dedicated storage space and materials made providing interactive lessons a challenge, and combined with the tables and chairs that our friends at Centre ValBio recently provided, the Center is well on its way to being able to better accommodate the large number of students that spend their Saturdays there to learn and play. 

And what better way to learn and play than through nature journaling! Working together with the Center's teachers, we've designed this practice to complement their existing lesson plans on biodiversity and environmental concepts, offering the students a new and personal way through which to interact with and explore their surroundings. If you're interested in supporting this project, be sure to head over to our Support Our Work page!

December has been busy, to say the least. We're thrilled to be ending the year as an official tax-exempt nonprofit and we've been working hard to have oloNala set up to hit the ground running with projects in 2025. Our first goal? To equip the Ranomafana Nature Center with the materials they need to incorporate art into their existing environmental education lessons!

In other news, while construction for the oloNala Art Residency is still in its early phases, we are excited to share that two artists, Barbara Wille and Fidelis Joseph, have joined our Artist Network! They will be instrumental in helping artists in our program identify and apply for further opportunities in Madagascar and abroad. In the meantime though, they lend their ideas and insights to help make oloNala as impactful as possible. 

Lastly, we've created our quarterly newsletter! If you'd like to stay up-to-date on our projects, please sign up at the link to the left to receive a letter from us every few months with some fun updates. 

See you in 2025!

We were very excited to attend the annual Safina Center Gala, held at the Explorer's Club in New York City this November! Rasolo attended as one of the honored guests—a Safina Center Launchpad Fellow—and Johanna as a very enthusiastic supporter. The Safina Center has played a pivotal role in helping us to lay the foundations of the work we'd like to continue doing through oloNala, from supporting VOI Mitsinjo in expanding their infrastructure for ecotourism to laying the groundwork for our art-residency program, to so much more! The Safina Center mission, "Advancing the case for life on Earth," is close to our hearts, and we look forward to making our case creatively and with the communities we work with front and center. 

Bottom photo by Patricia Paladines

With support from Sunshine Comes First, The Safina Center Launchpad Fellowship, and proceeds from the Studio oloNala Art Gallery & Shop, Rasolo and engineer Bien Aimee Randriamamonjy broke ground at the site of the Art Residency this past month! This is an exciting first step in setting up the infrastructure to host local artists for our annual residency program. Our goal is to complete the foundation before Madagascar's notorious rainy season hits the eastern coast in January!

Many thanks to Sunshine Comes First and The Safina Center for making this first step possible!