Friday, March 7th, and Saturday, March 8th 2014

The last two days….how time has flown.

On Friday, March 7th, we started with a meeting with US ADF, the United States Agricultural Development Fund.  We wanted to ask about funding to start a goat business for the women’s associations, using the brown goats of Maradi. The country representative of US ADF told us that our Women’s Associations must apply directly. Another potentially great opportunity. As Dov always says, “Leave no stone unturned”.

On the way back Hamani suggested we stop at the Agricultural Fair, which the Minister of Agriculture had recommended we see. It was very educational and everyone there knew Dov. At one point, Dov recognized the “plants” from the Sadore nursery, even before he saw the women from Sadore!

 

Dov pointed to many varieties of vegetables and fruits that were created by him and his team when he worked at ICRISAT.  I saw a big crowd of VIPs walking with Military protection, and spotted the Minister of Agriculture among them.  I broke through the security and crowd and tapped him on the shoulder and he enthusiastically exclaimed, “you came”! I thanked him for making the recommendation to visit.

 

On our way back, we drove through the busy, crowded petit Marché, Niamey’s small vegetable market and saw the hustle and bustle of daily shopping and trading.

At 11am, we saw the first draft of the first video we had commissioned to show the stories of successful farmers to children in school.  This one was about the women in Sadore and it was really well done. We added some thoughts and suggestions before they finalize it and discussed the next two videos they will shoot.  We are excited to show the videos to students in our pilot schools and eventually to students across the country. This will show them, by example from others,  that agriculture is a successful way to make a very good living.

Then we began a marathon of team meetings that would last until the end of our trip. We are all so energized by each other. It is rare in life that you find a team that you work so well with and whose skills so perfectly complement each other.

LAST DAY, Saturday, March 8th

At 9:30am, after an hour and a half of team meetings, we travelled to Libore for our debrief with Boubacar, the current mayor and all the local municipal Councilors. After we filled them in on the week’s activities, they went around the table thanking us so much for our efforts.  The Mayor then invited us for dinner at the Grand Hotel for 8 pm that evening. This was a very gracious and thoughtful offer which we readily accepted. Our flights didn’t leave until after midnight, and as tired as we were, this would be a lovely way to spend our last few hours. 

The rest of the day was spent meeting, packing, talking and reviewing the week’s events.  Our brains were working at half mast.

And then came the wonderful parade of friends to say goodbye to us.  Sidi  with his many adorable children,

Hamani and his four cute daughters,

the Chef de Canton joined by  his warm and gracious bodyguard, the former Vice Mayor, Fatouma (who also accompanied us to the airport), Amadou and his wife Fati, Gaston and Madame Foumakoye, the former Ambassador to Canada. All made a point of coming by.

We had a really relaxing and enjoyable dinner with the Mayor, Amadou and the Councilors who attended.  A perfect end to a special trip.

We were taken into the special lounge at the airport with Hamani, Amadou, Fatouma and Ibrahim (one of the Councilors who works at the PM’s office) and passed the next hour laughing and telling stories.

Just before boarding, 4 Air France Officials came in and looked at me, and said that because it was International Women’s Day, they put all the boarding passes into a pail, and mine was selected to win a prize! So they gave me a leather Air France pouch and then took photos!!!

Before leaving, I had a chat with Hamani.  For eight years, since we met,  I have watched him grow from a shy, quiet person to the confident man he is today at 40. We have been through so much together as both our organizations Pencils for Kids and LIBO started around the same time.  It was a really special moment.  He is humble and kind and respected within the community and spends his life trying to help the Nigerien people.

In fact, there are simply no words to explain the depth of grace that the Nigerien people have – they are supremely cultured in the way they interact with each other, with their families and with visitors.  We saw their integrity, kindness and warmth every day.

It has been 8 years since the Canadian Consulate suggested I speak with Amadou Madougou, and from that moment on, I knew we were in the best of hands.  Amadou remains our mentor and guide and above all, our friend.  Can’t wait to see what the next 8 years will bring!

 

 

 

 

Day 4 and Day 5, March 5th and March 6th, 2014

The fatigue is setting in. We are all feeling it.

Before breakfast I got a call from the former Vice Mayor of Libore,  that she was in the lobby wanting to see me! The Nigerien people I have met are always so thoughtful, polite and kind. I spent a few minutes with her and filled her on our activities for the week.

Then it was off to another round of meetings.  We met with the Consular from the US Embassy and with the local representative of USAID, an organization that funds many development projects.

Both meetings went exceedingly well and were encouraging.

After lunch, we had a meeting with the Director of Kollo, the Agricultural high school in Niger. Until this year, it has been like a secondary school for agriculture, but instead of three years of high school, like they have in most schools in Niger, students study for four years.  Now, with a new law, that may pass this month, there will be opportunity for the graduates to take two more years of specialty in Horticulture (vegetable gardening) after they graduate.  

The good news for us is that it may save us the need to start our own training school for horticulture and fits in well with the suggestion from the First Lady that the solution be sustainable.  The timing couldn’t be better as the country needs new technicians and every agricultural project will require them as well.

Next came a meeting with the Minister of Agriculture. He was delighted with our work and invited us to attend the Agricultural Fair that he had organized for the week.

Day 5, March 6th, 2014

Another surprisingly productive day.

We had a meeting this morning with the Swiss Cooperative, a Swiss organization that has been working in Niger for 30 years.  They were very open and receptive to our program, and definitely want to visit the sites with Dov. They have the same vision. What was particularly touching, was that one of their staff in the room recognized P4K and had heard how much Libore has changed as a result of P4K’s programs.

Then we had a very fruitful discussion with the three school Directors of our three pilot schools, and the pedagogical Councilor who monitors the teachers performances.  They all are quite happy with the program — said that each school had a few students that on their own initiative have started entrepreneurial activities at home and made money. They said that sometimes the students correct their mothers in the gardens if they feel they are not doing something correctly.

At 2:30 we had a phenomenal meeting at FAO. This is the UN organization involved with Agriculture. They have a great reputation and they really respected the FOF concept.  They plan to visit the sites and then we can sit down to see if there are opportunities for collaboration.   Amadou Madougou joins us at all our meetings.  The people love him and you can see the warmth and respect in their eyes and manner. 

Our second last meeting of the day was with Dan Goma — the Nigerien expert on animals.  Dov wants us to start a goat breeding program for the women with the Brown Goat of Maradi, a goat that has up to 5 “kids” per year, and gives excellent milk (1 litre per day), but needs no pastures to roam.  So Dan will come back to us with the costs of buying 70 – 100 of the female goats and a small number of males. Another potential opportunity for income generation for the women.

And then in the evening we went to see the local Rotary club that is the host club for the International Rotary Global grant we received that sponsors a vegetable garden in Ecole Centre and a nursery in Gonzare.  Many clubs in both Canada and US are contributors.

A long day, but another hugely productive one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 3, Tuesday, March 4th, 2014

It is another fascinating day.

This morning we went about 45 minutes out of town to see a village called Sadoré, where Dov started spontaneously piloting the FOF over 7 years ago. Sadoré village is just across the street from ICRISAT, the organization he spent ten years working for when he came to Niger. It does scientific research on crops and Dov was the lead scientist involved with crop diversification.

At that time, Dov wanted to teach the women in Sadoré how to build a tree nursery and graft trees.  He also started programs for the children having gardens right outside their classrooms. His philosophy for the FOF was borne of years of research.  He found that the older generations simply would not change their attitudes to agriculture. They relied on rain fed crops and subsistence agriculture rather than market – oriented agriculture using high value crops that could generate income.  The only way to change this mindset was to focus on the children and their mothers.  And so the concept of the Farmers of the Future was born.

The women in Sadoré were poor, as most women are in Niger. They lived in straw huts.  For the next two years, technicians from ICRISAT and Dov spent hours teaching them how to graft, how to sell, how to take care of the plants and the nursery, and how to become businesswomen.   In 2010, Dov left his position at ICRISAT and no longer lived full time in Niger.  He wasn’t able to return to Sadoré for a few years. But in 2013 he heard that a remarkable transformation occurred there, and he went to visit. The entire village was changed and all the women were hugely successful. New homes, electricity, fridges and many more luxuries that they could only dream of before.

So our visit to Sadoré was an opportunity for all of us to hear more about how this miracle happened.   We sat down with the President and Secretary General of the Women’s Association. The Secretary General told us that each woman contributes $20,000 cfa at the beginning of the year to a communal petty cash, to cover their repair and maintenance costs for the larger nursery.  But they have their own trees and manage their own micro -businesses.  Not only does each woman participate in the larger nursery,  each also started their own private nurseries in their backyards, which their husbands help run. The Sadoré women have a reputation in the region for producing excellent plants, and they have been hired by our own pilot schools to help coach the women there.  The Women’s Association elects six positions, President, Secretary General, Treasurer and three Deputy positions.

 

 

They told us that their lives have totally transformed in these past years and the village is prosperous.  They have a standard of living beyond most rural women. And their children are going to Secondary school and some to University. 

Dov was received with cheers, dancing and huge adoration. They call him a name which means “papa”.  He was humbled and told them that it wasn’t him, that “they did it themselves and that they finally learned to believe in themselves”.

 

What is so exciting for us, is that we can see the the model for the FOF has worked and there is now even greater optimism for the future success of the program.

After our visit to Sadoré, we  had a meeting with the  Director of the Triple N initiative.  He fully endorsed the project, echoing his colleague’s remarks from the day before.

Bachir Mamanfifi, the Senior Diplomatic Advisor to the Prime Minister, who used to work at the Niger embassy in Canada, visited just before dinner.  Bachir was as elegant and warm as always and hopes to visit Sadore with Dov in the coming weeks.  

At dinner, a lesson from Dov. He told us to always have a big vision to aspire to in life.  If you dream small,  then you will gear your life to that. If you dream big, then you will rise to that occasion.

Another special day in Niger with the gracious Nigerien people.

 

 

It is the second full day of our journey, Monday, March 3rd, 2014.

One of the purposes of this trip was to meet the First Lady and the head of the Triple N initiative and get their support for the creation of a Training Centre for the technicians, the expansion of the FOF and their general support of the concept.

Today we made great headway on all these fronts.

First we met with our partners from the Ministry of Education. They have been in our corner for the past three years and we are very grateful to the CJPE, in the Ministry for their ongoing support.

Then we went to the headquarters of the Triple N initiative — this was set up by the President of Niger to help “Nigeriens Nourish Nigeriens”, hence the “Triple N” name. It is the goal to help Nigeriens finally feed themselves and become self sufficient.  And we respect that vision as it accords with our own.  As the saying goes, the goal is not to give a man a fish, but to teach him to fish.

We met one of the senior members of this Department.  He was extremely impressed by Dov’s vision and by what has been accomplished and said we are knocking at the right door at the right time. He  feels this program perfectly fits their own agenda and they are also fully behind the creation of more technical capacity as they too see the great need.  He then joined us as we went to see the First Lady.  This clearly showed that the Triple N initiative that her husband set up, is fully behind our FOF program as well.

The first lady was an elegant, well spoken and intelligent woman. It was a really wonderful meeting.

Dov’s experience and passion came through, and his love for the people of Niger was evident. He told her and others throughout our meetings during the trip, about the remarkable transformation of the women in Sadore, who were the first ones to be part of the FOF program Dov had initiated informally in 2007.  The women there, after only two years of technical training and assistance, were left on their own and have become such successful entrepreneurs that they built 104 new homes from cement (replacing the straw homes), sent their children to Secondary school and University and are making 1.5 million cfas each per year.

The First Lady asked relevant questions, and shared with us her own objectives with the Guri Foundation which she founded.  She inquired how she could help and particularly wanted to be sure that our programs would be sustainable long after we are gone from the country. John and Dov both spoke eloquently, and near the end I also said to her, that P4K had worked in Niger for the past 8 years. In that time we started 10 kindergartens, all of which function today without any assistance from us.  We built a sewing centre and today it too functions with no outside funds, except for future infrastructure expansion.  The sewing girls each pay to join. It is fully self sustaining. 8 of our girls from the scholarship program are now in university and we do not support them any longer.  Our aim, I said was the same as hers – total sustainability.  Most of all, I said,  we seek her as a role model,  because if women and children see she endorses this concept and believe in it,  they will know that they too have reason to believe and follow her lead. I said we seek her mentorship, her guidance and her friendship and her ability to open doors for us.  Then I took out the scarf that my mother had hand – painted with a variety of colourful fruit, and told her that my mother was an artist and painted it prior to her death in October.  The scarf represented the “fruits” of our agricultural program.  She proudly put it on, and was very touched. She told me that her daughter was an artist studying abroad, but that she would love for us to meet one day. It was a heartwarming moment – and there were tears in my eyes. I could feel my mother was with me.

The First Lady was warm and enthusiastic and said our goals fit perfectly with her own objectives and she will do what she can.  Regarding the Training Centre that we were proposing she suggested we speak with the Kollo School of Agriculture as having the Centre within their school would be the most sustainable option.  We readily agreed as it was a very good idea and made arrangements to meet the Director of Kollo during the week. 

We couldn’t have anticipated a more welcoming response.

We talked with Professor Balla, from the University of Niamey Department of Agriculture about possibilities for Moringa production, an opportunity to create some businesses for women using the Moringa they were now growing.  We will follow up with him about possibilities in the near future.

 We visited with the Chef de Canton and later had dinner at the hotel with Amadaou Madougou and his family, and Madame Foumakoye, former Ambassador to Canada, and her husband.  At the end everyone made toasts and the emotion was overflowing. 

Another excellent day.