30 JUNE 1997

Update on The Hunger Project's Work in Africa

Upon his recent return from four weeks in West Africa, Ambassador Fitigu Tadesse, The Hunger Project's Director of Africa Programs, reported to us about the exciting progress in Senegal, Burkina Faso, Benin and Ghana.

SENEGAL

The five villages in Senegal where The Hunger Project has been working since 1993 - Mbatiass, Mpal Nder, Grand Mpal, Mpal Tack and Semel - are now self-reliant. Prior to this, these "forgotten villages" were at subsistence level and generated little or no income. During the period before the harvests, food stocks ran low and people went hungry.

Now the people have sustainable livelihoods and they have enough to eat throughout the year. The Hunger Project's council in Senegal is catalyzing this breakthrough through programs that foster food security and nutrition security by increasing food production with crops such as peanuts and vegetables and generating income with activities such as poultry farming, tie-dying and dress making.

The income-generating projects are so successful that some areas now have labor shortages! Young people who moved to the city are now returning to the villages because of availability of work and opportunities for livelihood.

The women, through the micro-credit facility of The Hunger Project, are conducting successful small businesses in the marketplace. The women's cooperatives are so well organized that they have developed a marketing strategy enabling members to travel to the big cities and sell products.

A safe drinking water project, launched with the financial support of The Hunger Project- Switzerland, has been inaugurated that will serve 20,000 people in the region around Mpal.

Building on the accomplishments of our first initiatives, we are expanding into 41 additional villages in the region of Linguere (in the north-central part of the country) where similar projects to empower the hungry people will be launched by July of this year.

BURKINA FASO

In January, The Hunger Project initiated a partnership with NAAM, one of the largest peasant associations in Africa led by 1989 Africa Prize laureate, Dr. Bernard Ouedraogo. In this short time, three projects have already been launched to increase food production; they have established micro-credit cooperatives for women for income- generating activities; and they've created a traditional rural savings bank.

Fitigu met with over 200 women members of NAAM who declared that, thanks to the partnership of THP expressed through the funding of the three projects, they now have a clear vision of ensuring that the IMR in the NAAM villages will be below 50 by the year 2000.

Women are part of the dynamic leadership of the NAAM movement, participating in the decision making process regarding all the activities. They are equal and respected partners with men in their development work to improve the life of the rural population.

The Hunger Project will hold a national strategy design meeting for the end of hunger in Burkina Faso in November 1997.

BENIN

In January, THP opened its office in Porto Novo, Benin, at the Songhai Center to empower the work of Africa Prize laureate, Father Nzamujo and enhance our strategy for ending hunger on a regional basis in West Africa.

As in Burkina Faso, a very powerful group of women and men are members of the National council. The national vision of the people and government of Benin is to create viable and self-reliant rural communities in Benin by the year 2001.

THP-Benin is in the process of launching its Strategic Planning in Action (SPIA) projects in the two strategic regions of Atlantic and Oueme.

GHANA

Since its creation in July 1996, The Hunger Project-Ghana has already held a successful national strategy design meeting for the end of hunger in which all sectors of the Ghanaian civil society, including national and local government, actively participated.

In recent months, the initial programs in Taido Anomabu have been flourishing and The Hunger Project has now rapidly expanded into four other areas where it has conducted strategy design meetings, each attended by 250 people.

In Taido Anomabu, The Hunger Project-Ghana has generated a wide range of projects. One program has trained the villagers in all aspects of pineapple cultivation: scientific planting, protecting the plants from insects, fertilizing, collecting, packaging and marketing their products. The Hunger Project-Ghana has also linked the villagers with businessmen in Accra to buy their entire product for 1997. Empowered with this training, the villagers have taken a formerly marginal and random crop and turned it into an income generating enterprise that is lucrative for the entire village.

In addition, with technical and financial assistance from The Hunger Project-Ghana, the villagers supplied the manpower to erect a multi-purpose building that has become a high-leverage resource to the community, serving as school, training center and meeting place. Fifty children are now going to school. Ninety-eight women have taken literacy training. Strategy meetings and income-generating trainings are being conducted. A food processing facility has been created that processes the pineapple into juice for their own consumption and for market. The facility also lightens the workload of women. Instead of grating cassava and corn for hours, the women can crush the crops with a machine. Having more time available, the women are enabled to attend classes in literacy, pottery making and family health care.

There is a "community learning from community" program where one community cooperates with another community in sharing their know how on income generating projects.

As a result of economic empowerment, the women in the villages are extremely enthusiastic in their work and become very committed to working for a better life and better nutrition for their children and family as a whole.

In Accra, THP-Ghana is working in partnership with the Rotary Club to finance the construction of a dam that will enable the community to produce food all year around through irrigation.

One of the most impressive results is taking place in the market in Accra where THP- Ghana is training 60 poor women in traditional soap making. After graduating from the training, the women receive the appropriate tools and a small loan to enable then to return to their villages and earn money by making and selling soap. By enabling women to engage in such lucrative work, THP-Ghana has taken a step to reverse the exodus of young girls and women from the village to the city.

Thank you for your partnership in making this work possible.