The Madagascar School Project began in 2007 when Kathy Lucking, a Canadian elementary school teacher, volunteered in an orphanage in Madagascar and was struck by the number of children who seemed destined to repeat a cycle of malnutrition and poverty because their families couldn’t afford to send them to school.

So Kathy came home to Canada and founded MSP. She gathered a community of friends, colleagues, business people, and church members, and started raising money to build a school.