Independent filmmaker Daniel Balluff, a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger from 1986 to 1988, returned to Niger in 2005 to make three films. You can see a four minute preview of one of the films, Niger: Living on the Edge of Survival, in this clip hosted byYouTube. Watch video on YouTube Visit our movies page to see more previews of Dan's movies and find out how you can see the entire movie.
The Peace Corps Wiki is a collaborative project whose goal is to create a free, interactive, and up-to-date source of information about serving as a volunteer with the U.S. Peace Corps. Anyone is welcome to edit, add, or change any entry, or start a new one. So far there are a total of 260 pages that have been written and edited by (R)PCVs and Friends of Peace Corps from around the world. Note that the contents of the Peace Corps Wiki are...
The Peace Corps staff in Niger is preparing to celebrate the 45th year of Peace Corps in Niger, including a series of activities and events taking place in September. Please visit our Peace Corps/Niger 45th Anniversary Celebrations page for more information about the celebrations, and how you can participate. For questions or more information, please contact Christopher Burns in the Niger Peace Corps office at cburns@ne.peacecorps.gov.
National Public Radio has produced a few short but informative videos on climate change, with one video featuring Niger, and focusing on a recent well-known story about how trees are finally returning to the desert: Another feature on NPR's web site looks at the effect of climage change on Tuareg nomads in nearby Mali:
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...