We are all concerned about the growing food crisis in Niger, and MercyCorps is ramping up their efforts not only to raise awareness of this dire situation, but to provide direct assistance that is greatly needed in the Sahel.

Some featured articles include:

Cassandra Nelson’s latest blog entry describes the impact the hunger crisis is having on children.

Full URL: http://www.mercycorps.org/cassandranelson/blog/26626

In this video Nelson gives an overview of the crisis and how MercyCorps is beginning to help.

Visual Impact

A gallery of images showing the impact MercyCorps is having in Niger

Full URL: http://www.mercycorps.org/photoessay/harvestinghope

The Ongoing Crisis

Read entries from the ongoing food crisis in Niger

Full URL: http://www.mercycorps.org/tags/nigerfoodcrisis

Read all the details about MercyCorps’ programs in Niger.

Full URL: http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/niger/15086

You can help!

Donate to MercyCorps to help fight the Niger food crisis.

Full URL: https://www.mercycorps.org/donate

This year, as many as 7.8 million people – more than half of Niger’s total population – face the grim prospect of months without sufficient food.

Sporadic rains during the last growing season have had a devastating effect on harvests and food supplies, leaving households with little to save for the long “hungry season” between harvests. There are already widespread reports of families – particularly women and children – skipping meals and having to forage for semi-edible grasses, leaves and other wild food.

They need help to survive until the fall harvest, and the Government of Niger has requested urgent assistance from the international community.

Mercy Corps – which has worked in some of Niger’s poorest villages since 2005 – has plans to deliver food and other critical assistance to more than 211,000 people threatened by the hunger crisis. Through government grants, private support and partnerships with local organizations, Mercy Corps will supply nutritious food to vulnerable households, in addition to supporting community banks and early warning response mechanisms.

Read about how Mercy Corps is preparing a response to the growing crisis in Niger:http://www.mercycorps.org/topics/agriculture/21223

Click here to donate: https://donate.mercycorps.org/donation.htm

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 – at risk for chronic malnutrition and other dire health problems. Children, already Niger’s most vulnerable population, have been most affected of all. Today, Mercy Corps is working to help determined Nigeriens build locally sustainable, resilient health and nutrition networks so that communities can cope with crisis – and mothers can provide a healthier future for their young children.

Please take some time to look at the work Mercy Corps is doing in Niger and around the world.

See Mercy Corps’ focus on Niger here:

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.

 http://www.educatetomorrow.org/

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.

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.

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

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: