Expanding the Process in West Africa - 1998

This year, 1998, has seen major expansion in The Hunger Project's campaign to mobilize the people of West Africa to build a future free from hunger.

Recently, the director of our Africa region, Dr. Fitigu Tadesse, completed a 4-week visit of all four Hunger Project countries to see first-hand the progress underway.

In each country, the process of Strategic Planning-in-Action (SPIA) extends outward from a series of epicenter villages. The epicenter village has been organized by The Hunger Project and builds a community training center by the people's own efforts and utilizing local materials. At the training center people learn literacy and new skills in income generating activities. Hunger Project committees in the villages -- with equal numbers of women and men -- are formed to mobilize the population and coordinate local strategies in food production, handicrafts, food storage and other necessities.

As people in surrounding villages see the success of the epicenter village, they organize their own Hunger Project committees and come to the epicenter for training and empowerment. The SPIA process is thus extended into many villages surrounding the epicenter.

Animators: The key to accelerating this expansion are trained animators -- local people who take responsibility for mobilizing the people for self-reliance. A key intention of this trip was to meet hundreds of animator candidates who will be trained by The Hunger Project in 1999. The animators are key to ensuring the sustainability of the eradication of hunger and poverty in the rural areas.

Rural banking: One outstanding result is that many households are in a position to gain income and to save money in rural banks that they themselves are establishing in the community centers. Previously, people had no access to banking, and their savings were being literally eaten by termites!

Benin

	This community training and health center has been built by the villagers of Wawata village, which has been designated by the government of Benin to be a demonstration village for its new policy of locally-directed rural development. Ten surrounding villages will soon carry out trainings from this center.
	The latest initiative by the people of Wawata is the construction of this bio-gas plant, which will convert bio-waste into electricity and cooking fuel.

Burkina Faso

	The two epicenters in Burkina Faso are the villages of Zinko and Nagrengo. Here villagers in Nagrengo greet country director Dr. Idrissa Dicko outside the fabric tie-dying center they have built.
	Women doing tie-dye work in Nagrengo.

Ghana

	Woman in Taido processing cassava with a motorized grater, saving hours of drudgery and freeing time for training and literacy courses.
	Volunteers filling pots for a tree plantation initiative in Dzemeni. Most of the trees are fruit trees.

Senegal

	During 1998, under the leadership of new country director Aboubakar Kourouma (right), The Hunger Project-Senegal has expanded from its initial success in 5 villages into 42 villages. Here he and Dr. Tadesse meet with three leading animators in the village of Keur Seya.
	Villagers in N'Diouss meet with Dr. Tadesse and Dr. Kourouma about their oil press.

30 April 1998 -- Inauguration of Senegal Water Project

Water is terribly scarce in the Sahelian northern region of Senegal. Recently, a major new initiative to bring water to 15,000 people was completed by The Hunger Project-Senegal and formally inaugurated. This system now provides the first and only safe drinking water in the region.

The ceremony was attended by a delegation led by Renata Beguin, managing director of The Hunger Project-Switzerland. The Hunger Project-Switzerland was responsible for mobilizing the funds for the initiative, with major financing from the Schweizer Hunger Hilfe foundation. The government of Senegal was represented at the ceremony by the Minister of Water Resources Mamadou Faye.

The project involved construction of a water tower and pipelines necessary to link villages in this remote region to the national water pipeline. The pipelines serves the cluster of villages in Mpal and the neighboring villages of Ndakhar and Teud Biti. As a result, other NGOs are contemplating extending the pipeline to other surrounding villages.

Renata Beguin with village leaders after the inauguration ceremony.