Mercy Corps is giving special attention to Niger's ongoing cycle of hunger in their fundraising efforts, calling it one of the world's "Silent Disasters". From their web site, http://www.mercycorps.org : Long months of hunger between meager harvests hold Niger's families in a brutal grip. Mercy Corps is helping them break free. Successive poor harvests put more than 3.5 million Nigeriens - about 20 percent of that country's entire population...
Recently Boston University students Magali Carette and Sarah Garton spent some time with Habsou Aboubacar, who runs Tin-Hinan, a non-governmental organization supported in part by Friends of Niger. Sarah sent us the following report, along with a few pictures, after their stay in Niger. Read the Tin-Hinan Update:
A Nigerien who was a language teacher for PC Niger (1990) is currently in the US on a fellowship for foreign journalists. He sends the following message - please contact him if you are interesting in helping. Since 1990, I've been a journalist and a communicator, owning a communications agency called Les Echos du Sahel, and dealing rural world and development (printing, broadcasting, training, advising, etc.). I arrived in the U.S. last June...
A welsh teenager was so moved by her experience in visiting a Médecins Sans Frontières project in the world's poorest country that she has set up an online account with justgiving.com so that people can finance the project. 18 year-old Ysgol Dyffryn Teifi sixth-former, Siriol Teifi visited Niger in February of 2007 to see for herself the situation 16 months after the terrible famine of Autumn 2005. Back in November 2005, Siriol raised 2000...
The New York Times has a nice article discussing the progress Niger has made against desertification over the past few decades, while continuing to deal with a fast growing population. Full URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/world/africa/11niger.html?ei=5094&en=1162f89bceeed3d4&hp=&ex=1171256400
Virginia Emmons is the co-founder and director of Educate Tomorrow, an international non-profit organization seeking to provide equitable access to education for all people Virginia is also a Niger RPCV, and is helping to organize fundraisers in San Francisco and Washington DC whose main goal is to raise money for a boarding house in Kirtachi, Niger. When the Peace Corps left the Kirtachi region, the Peace Corps and the Nigerien government...
At the March 12, 2006 meeting of the Board of Directors of Friends of Niger, the board voted to allocate the sum of $500 to a newly formed NGO, Tin-Hinan. In the past year FON members have contributed over $1000 earmarked for micro-credit projects. RPCV Sue Rosenfeld will present the check to this organization on behalf of FON when she returns to Niger in late April. Tin-Hinan is a non-profit registered with the government of Niger. The founder...
Lamine Touré On February 25th, The Homegrown Coffeehouse in Needham, MA, a suburb of Boston, presented A Night of West African Music as a fundraiser for Niger. Three West African musical groups came together to play to a standing room only crowd. The groups included the Agbekor Society playing high energy polyrhythmic traditional music from Ghana and Togo, The JAG Drum and Dance Ensemble featuring special guest Mohammed Kalifa Camara...