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Fund Raisers planned for San Francisco and Washington DC to Support Boarding House

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 agreed to donate the former Peace Corps hostel and land to the project. Now, money is needed to convert and operate the hostel so that middle-school students from the region who live in far away villages can stay in the hostel, enabling them to attend school regularly. Students from Kabey Fo, a village 25 kilometers away from the nearest middle school, will be the first beneficiaries of the project.

The fund raisers will include wine tasting and silent auctions. Items to be auctioned include a cruise, a week at a beach house, art work, wine, and more. Organizers are still accepting donations for the silent auctions.

Event Dates:

  • San Francisco: August 18, 2006
  • Washington DC: September 8, 2006

To volunteer, make a donation, or for general information, please contact Virginia Emmons atinfo@educatetomorrow.org.

FON Supports Micro-credit Projects in Niger

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 and president of this organization is a Tuarag woman, Habsatou Aboubacar. Rural women in Niger encounter enormous difficulties, among others, the lack of sources of revenue because of lack of means and time to take part in activities that will generate revenue and permit them to be financially independent. Our donation will help finance the micro-credit operation for the women of Goroubi in the Tillabery Region to enable the women of this region to provide for their needs and the needs of their children.

Project Information

Title: Micro-credit projects for women
Global Objective: Improvement of living conditions for women
Location: Village of Goroubi
Department: Say
Region: Tillabery
Country: Niger
Budget: 9,630,000 F cfa (14,705 Euros)
Number of Beneficiaries: 20 women
Duration: 14 months
Expected Start Date: January 2006
Project End Date: March 2007
Organization Name: Association Tin Hinan
Official Contact: Mme Habsatou Aboubacar
Tel: (00227) 88 42 04
BP 11470 Niamey Niger
E-Mail: tinhinanniger@yahoo.fr

For more information on this project, contact Gabriella Maertens at gmaertens@earthlink.net.

Niger Fundraiser a Success!


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 performing traditional music from his homeland of Guinea, and Lamine Touré and Group Saloum fusing Senegalese mbalax with elements of jazz, funk, reggae and Afro-pop. Drumming and singing filled the room as more than 250 people enjoyed the show and were moved to clap, sing and dance in the isles.

All of the groups donated their performances and 100% of proceeds, over $4300, were donated to Oxfam America.

Niger RPCV Sheri Kennedy Raising Money for Oxfam

After reading about the food crisis in Niger, Sheri Kennedy, a Niger RPCV currently working as a professional artist in the Boston area, was inspired to create a painting as a fundraiser. “The painting is done from a photo of my villagers outside Dossey, north of Birni n’Konni”, Kennedy says, “and is called Tilling the Soil, Dossey, Niger.”

High-quality giclée reproductions of the painting are available for $40 (plus shipping). Approximtely $10 of the proceeds of each print will be forwarded on to Oxfam. “The more prints are ordered, the more the printing costs drop, and therefore the more will go to Oxfam. Please pass this along to anyone you know who might be interested in buying art to feed Niger.”

Prints can be ordered at Sheri’s Art-Think web site:

Tuaregs in Abalak Still Waiting for Aid

Ingrid Patetta, a filmmaker residing in New York, recently returned from the Abalak region in the northern Tahoua department. She has produced an excellent 7-minute video on behalf of Tagaste, a small NGO that is trying to bring the current plight of Tuareg nomads to the world’s attention. She is making the film available on the Internet, and she is interested in partnering with Friends of Niger around the U.S. to organize public screenings of the film to raise funds for Tagaste’s work with the people of Abalak, many of whom have yet to receive assistance in the year-old food crisis.

We encourage all to view the video, then contact Ingrid for more information.

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