In 2003  Andrea Katz and Charlie Welch, MFG Program Managers, held a series of meetings with the President of the Province of Toamasina, University of Toamasina (UT) faculty, ANGAP (now MAP) and Department of Water and Forest (DWF) employees, public school educators, and business leaders to help plan the MFG's conservation strategy for the next five to ten years.  The predominant theme that emerged from these meetings was Toamasina's scarcity of resources essential to increasing the region's capacity to staff and manage their reserves, parks and other areas of biodiversity interest. The concept of Parc Ivoloina's Conservation Training Center (ICTC) grew out of these discussions.

The ICTC was built in phases; construction of the meeting hall, laboratory and reference library was  first.  Although the need for capacity building was clearly articulated by community leaders, the MFG felt it was best to prioritize development of the programs to be offered based on need and availability of expertise to develop them.  To that end a Capacity Building Workshop was  held at the Saint Louis Zoo in April 2005 which brought a delegation of Tamatave officials and University faculty to meet with colleagues from local universities. 

All participants gave presentations detailing needs and opportunities. Perhaps the words spoken by Emile Tsizarina, PhD and, at that time, President of the Province of Toamasina were the most meaningful and had the greatest impact on the initial direction of the ICTC.  

"As in other developing countries, not only Madagascar, where 80% of people are rural, there are conflicts between poverty and biodiversity.  Most rural people subsist on agriculture and in so doing put a very heavy toll on the environment. It is necessary to address this issue.

We can't have poverty and biodiversity co-existing.  If biodiversity will win, poverty must lose."

It may therefore not be so surprising that an almost instant connection and collaboration was formed between  Gene Garrett, PhD, Director of the University of Missouri's Center for Agroforestry and Toamasina Region President  Dr Tsizarina who invited him to Toamasina to continue discussions.  Dr. Garrett  in turn invited Dr. den Biggelaar, a colleague with tropical agroforestry experience, to accompany him.  In September2005  Drs. Garrett and den Biggelaar traveled to Madagascar where they met with Toamasina's  provincial authorities, University of Toamasina's faculty and MFG staff to: (1) discuss the initiation of ecoagriculture education, training and research programs and target user groups,  (2) advise how to best equip the Training Center and use the mixed habitats within Parc Ivoloina as a teaching and research field station, and (3) explore the application of an ecoagriculture approach to the matrix of farmed land surrounding  Ivoloina and Betampona.

Site visits were arranged for Drs. Garrett and den Biggelaar to meet with Malagasy agroforestry research and extension professionals and observe their facilities, tour the University's Department of Natural Resources (GRENE), and travel to rural villages to observe farming practices and speak with villagers.  Meetings with the extension agents revealed significant gaps in essential interdisciplinary knowledge and skills that are required to implement effective and appropriate agroforestry and ecoagriculture programs. 

Viewing the University of Toamasina's facilities underscored the challenges facing instructors who, with minimal access to textbooks and lacking laboratories, try to train the next generation of Madagascar's natural resource managers.  Without labs, journals, and other reference materials undergraduate and graduate students are deprived of basic resources indispensable to developing creative and independent thinking skills that enable them to synthesize and apply their acquired knowledge to address Madagascar's environmental problems.  Such gaps in Madagascar's formal education system will reverberate through students' professional careers as park managers, researchers, teachers, practitioners and leaders of the country's  governing ministries and conservation NGOs. 

A significant complaint heard from graduates of Madagascar's universities is that they lacked opportunities to practice theoretical classroom work through practical, hands-on field experience.  The inclusion of Parc Ivoloina facilities into GRENE's curriculum significantly expands the University's capacity to prepare students for natural resource careers.  Christof described Parc Ivoloina as a  "classroom/laboratory under the sun".   The Parc's landscape comprises a matrix of habitat patches that includes exotic and native plants and a diverse community of endemic fauna. In addition the MFG has developed a number of alternative land-use and management demonstration plots that can be used for training and research including a model agroforestry station, a tree nursery with native and environmentally friendly exotics, rice paddies using SRI, and a  medicinal plant garden.

Following the opening of the ICTC, construction of the two final components were carried out.  Grants from the Saint Louis Zoo's WildCare Center and the European Association of Zoos and Aquariums (EAZA) funded building and fully furnishing the dormitory.  A dormitory was essential to expanding our training programs to Malagasy  who do not have the ability to cover transportation and housing expenses.