P4K attends the Niger Renaissance Conference in Paris
Pencils for Kids, along with our colleagues Eliminate Poverty Now and LIBO were invited by the Minister of Planning of Niger to attend a two day conference in Paris, December 13-14, on Niger’s Renaissance – the five year plan from 2017 to 2021. We were honoured to be invited.
The conference set-up — ready for everyone to arrive!
It was an extraordinary conference, attended by the President of Niger, representatives and Heads of State from many countries and organizations, and hundreds of people from around the world. Its intent was to encourage investment in Niger and to inspire donors and others to work together to improve the economic opportunities for the people of Niger, paritcularly women and youth.
We were asked to present our Farmers of the Future program, in three minutes, to let people know what we had achieved and where we wanted to go in the field of agriculture and women’s income generation. We recommended a few things including the creation of a Horticultural Training Centre to increase the number of horticultural technicians in the country.
Robin and Hamani
Our speech went over well and many people came up to us asking to visit our FOF sites and to get copies of our FOF Operational Manual and our FOF Technical Manual. We were also approached by others who were interested in potentially helping us with financing.We were invited to attend the official dinner with the President and we sat beside the Minister of the Environment, the Minister of Population and the Ambassador from Niger to USA and Canada. We were introduced to the World Bank representative, who was impressed by our program, as well as the First Lady.
It was an excellent two days with many contacts made and an opportunity to put the FOF program in front of hundreds of people who had never heard of it before.
We are so grateful to the Minister of Planning and the Niger Government for including us in this most important event, and look forward to continuing to play our part in the expansion of our FOF program.
Robin Mednick with Eliminate Poverty Now Co-founder John Craig (left) and Hamani Djibo, LIBO President (right)
