Thank you for the water! It's great!

Amman Imman proudly presents the Ebagueye Borehole

Dear Friends of the Azawak,

Denis, Fassely, and I returned from Niger mid-March after four grueling yet extremely rewarding months running various projects in the Azawak.  With donations from individuals like you, funds raised by school children worldwide, and help from two dedicated foundations – The Vibrant Village Foundation and The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF) – we constructed the borehole of Ebagueye village.  The borehole will serve the needs of Ebagueye, the twelve surrounding smaller communities, as well as passing nomads and more distant populations.  You can imagine our tremendous joy as we witnessed the children gulping down and jubilantly bathing in the pure borehole water for the first time.
 
As you may have heard, this year’s drought and current food crisis in Niger is considered the worst that there has been in a decade or more by the World Food Program (WFP), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Oxfam, and most UN agencies. According to Oxfam, six million Nigeriens need immediate food aid in order to avoid an outright famine.  In the Azawak, prices for staple foods such as rice and millet have more than tripled, and most food items are unavailable on the local market.  This critical situation is being exacerbated by the Tuareg rebellion in Mali, as refugees flee their homeland and seek refuge in Niger, including the Azawak.  Just these past few days, Fulani families escaping Mali and its borders arrived in Ebagueye and Kijigari with thousands of livestock seeking water to assuage their thirst.
 
This winter, to help temper the threat of famine in our most vulnerable borehole communities, we provided food assistance to the villages of Tangarwashane and Chinwagari.  As a longer-term solution to their very desperate need for food, we also ran gardening training sessions, and donated tools and seeds to Tangarwashane.  The children were among the most eager planters, and thanks to their tender care, vegetables have begun sprouting from the once parched earth.
 
In addition to water and food assistance, we donated school books and materials to Tangarwashane, Kijigari, and to ten additional schools in rural Azawak.  Before we left, we also planted 40 mango and shade trees in Ebagueye, Kijigari, and Tangarwashane.
 
The Niger government has been supportive of our work, and the national TV station ORTN aired a show on the construction of the Ebagueye borehole.  Even the US ambassador to Niger, Bisa Williams, highly commended our activities after a visit to Kijigari and Ebagueye, and suggested we apply for funding through the US embassy. 
 
Stay tuned to learn more about our past four months in Niger and the Ebagueye Borehole story as it unfolds in upcoming installments.   Denis and I purposefully kept a low profile while we were in Niger, due to the threat of insecurity, and our desire to stay safe as we conducted our work in the Azawak.  I kept a monthly, sometimes weekly journal of our activities, and I’d like to share these with you in bi-monthly installments over the next couple of months.   
 
Sincerely Yours for the Children of the Azawak,
Ariane
Stay tuned for upcoming installments  about the Ebagueye borehole
and Denis and Ariane's four months in Niger!

With Water, There Will Be Life!

With water, there will be life!

March 22, 2012— Water—and having plentiful access to it—has transformed from dream to reality for those living on a slice of West Africa’s most barren landscape.

So this World Water Day, Amman Imman: Water is Life celebrates. We celebrate the crystalline water that thousands of people living in Niger’s Azawak region now drink each day. And we celebrate that many in the world have made water a priority: according to a recent report from the United Nations and the World Health Organization, Millennium Development Goal 7 has been met three years early by halving the number of people without access to clean water since 1990.
 

“With water, there will be life,” Ariane Kirtley, Amman Imman’s Founder and Director, has always said.

Amman Imman has seen this – life borne from water – in all of the work the organization has undertaken over the past six years. In partnership with local communities, global partners and school children from around the world, Amman Imman has brought four borehole wells to Niger’s Azawak region, offering more than 100,000 people and their livestock a sustained supply of clean water.

Clean and abundant water
Ebagueye, 2012

All four water sources are now owned by the villages surrounding them, and water has become a great source of health, life and economy. At the first water tower, which stores water from a borehole drilled in 2007, one might notice the small school that rests nearby. By the second, one might observe women using the water to grow vegetables. At the newest borehole, completed just last month, one might hear women convening to discuss how money gathered from selling the water for a small fee to passing nomads should be used and saved.

This might be the first time the children have attended school, relieved of the marathon journey they once traveled to find water. And the very first time, in all of the villages with boreholes, where women have become decision-makers.

The women and men on the
Ebagueye Water Management Committee

As Scott Johnson, a Newsweek reporter, wrote of his journey to visit the first borehole in 2009:  "When I first went to the Azawak, I visited camps and villages that had no water. I saw Hell, and people dying. I then travelled to the Amman Imman borehole of Tangarwashane. There, I saw a Paradise amidst Hell. People had water to drink, eat and bathe. Men were using the water to grow crops, and even the animals were thriving. They now have a store from where people everywhere come to buy goods. The children were playing and happy, and a school had been built. These people worshipped their borehole. It was their God, and they took care of it like they would an Idol."

With these flourishing communities, we celebrate life.

In the coming years, we will celebrate, and we will work hard to bring thousands more people in the Azawak clean water and other assistance. We will work, as the world must continue to do, for the more than 700 million people who still live without access to the most powerful source of life—clean water.

To make a financial contribution, please visit: www.ammanimman.org/Get_Involved/donate.html,   or www.ammanimman.org/Campaigns_New/campaigns.html to join one of our campaigns. 

School children in Tangarwashane using their new school books 

Women's garden in Kijigari

With two new partnerships, Amman Imman: Water is Life brings water, food to many more in Niger

A young girl  enjoys the water
during the pumping trials in Ebagueye.

Washington DC, February 27, 2012—Another 25,000 people and their animals in Niger’s Azawak Valley will now have access to clean water, largely because of support from Amman Imman’s two newest partners: The Vibrant Village Foundation and The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF).

Through a combined grant of $173,000 from the two foundations, additional funds totaling $64,000 from Amman Imman's partnering schools, and individual supporters, our fourth borehole well in the village of Ebagueye is now complete.  We are poised to conduct additional life-changing activities in the village, as well as to provide direct food assistance, gardening training and educational materials in the villages where Amman Imman's existing boreholes are already operating.

"We chose the site of Ebagueye and its surrounding communities at the beginning of December,” said Ariane Kirtley, Amman Imman’s Founder and Director. "By the end of December, the Ebagueye borehole had been drilled. The infrastructure was finished at the beginning of February, and the community has begun drinking the potable water."

Kirtley says her organization aims to create "Oases of Life" across the vast Azawak, starting with drilling permanent and sustainable water sources, not only for its 500,000 inhabitants, but also for refugees seeking shelter in the region. Those refugee communities include individuals that fled Libya last year, and those fleeing Mali today.

The Vibrant Village Foundation, headquartered in Portland, Oregon, supports communities in the United States and throughout the world to build healthy, prosperous, self-sustaining societies that foster tolerance, inclusion and dignity. The foundation focuses on nutrition and health, clean water, agriculture, education, the arts and poverty reduction.

Water tower,
Vibrant Village / The Prem Rawat Foundation
borehole in Ebagueye

“The partnership with Amman Imman is one that we are especially proud to be a part of,” said Ken Delaski, the Vibrant Village Foundation’s Founder and President.  “It has been amazing to watch from afar the rapid but holistic engagement and achievements that Amman Imman has reached in such a short period of time, and we look forward to unfolding plans that will ensure sustainability and maintenance of the boreholes and pump stations, as well as other community development projects."

The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF), founded in 2001 by Prem Rawat, known widely as an Ambassador of Peace and a humanitarian, partners with local and international organizations to help provide essentially needed aid, particularly food and water, directly and efficiently. Its aim is to give people what they most need so that they have a chance to live in dignity, peace and prosperity. Much a reflection of the way Amman Imman works, Prem Rawat expresses the Foundation’s objective as “to help people through the rough times without interfering with the beautiful things that exist in their culture, their beliefs, or their religion.”

Support from the foundations is especially crucial at this time, as another food crisis unfolds in Niger and the surrounding Sahel region, and the rainy season continues to abate.

Exciting news and a request for your help this holiday season!

We are partnering with the Vibrant Village Foundation! Thanks to a Vibrant Village grant of $130,000, Amman Imman is currently in the Azawak constructing a new borehole that will begin providing water for thousands of families in February 2012, before the height of the hottest part of the dry season in Niger. This borehole will provide water for as many as 30,000 people and animals.

We are working with our Azawak communities that already have a borehole to provide food relief!  To meet their immediate needs, we plan to supply their food banks. We'll also be implementing a drip irrigation project to support their long term agricultural and gardening efforts.  Read more details about the new borehole and projects here. 

Another devoted supporter and good friend has pledged $30,000! We are on our way towards alleviating the pressure cause by this year's food crisis in Niger, and providing a sustainable solution within our communities that will last for years to come.   But.....

We still need to raise $40,000 to complete these projects! 
That's where we need your help.

We are asking our supporters to help us raise these funds by the beginning of the year, to see our projects to fruition, and support ongoing follow-up throughout the year.  

Here's what you can do:

1) Make a donation. Large, medium, small - it all adds up to improving lives and bringing water, food, and hope!.

2) Create your own Amman Imman fundraising page and reach out to your community of family and friends. "It takes a village" of people helping to make a difference! 

3) Spread the Word.  On Facebook, Twitter, etc.

 Thank you for being part of our vision to bring water and hope to the Azawak! 

Saving lives with a Vibrant Village borehole, food and sustainable gardening

Here's what you can do to help Goal = $40,000 1. Make a donation 2. Create your own Amman Imman fundraising page 3. Spread the word

Dear Friends of the Azawak,
Before anything else, I’d like to wish all of you a wonderful Holiday Season. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and many blessings to you, our dear friends and supporters!

Denis, Fassely, and I arrived safely in Niger a few weeks ago.  We’ve been very active implementing projects that will have a life-changing impact for the Azawak.  Here’s some of what we’ve been working on…

The Vibrant Village Borehole
We are happy to announce that we’ve initiated the process to build our next borehole, which will solve the water supply issues for 5,000 to 30,000 people, depending on the time of the year.  We’ve chosen a village and its surrounding communities that harbor thousands of Tuareg and Fulani who currently have no immediate access to water.  For the time being, we’re keeping the community’s name anonymous to protect our security.  I’ll refer to it as the Vibrant Village, in honor of our primary funder, the Vibrant Village Foundation.  I’ll share our progress in the upcoming weeks.

Food activities
We are also fine-tuning the choices for our upcoming activities in Tangarwashane, Kijigari, and Tchinwagari(our past borehole communities).   Their current immediate priority is food.  According to the World Food Program (WFP) Niger is suffering its worst food crisis in over a decade (and the third it's experienced in the past six years). Between 60% to 90% of this year’s crops did not reach harvest - which has been estimated at approximately 500,000 tons of food that will not be available to feed Niger's populations. Many grains and basic food supplies (oil, sugar, etc) are difficult – sometimes impossible -- to find on the market. Those that can be found have tripled in price, and are unaffordable by most rural populations.  We are already witnessing the repercussions of this food crisis.  Many of our families eat only one small meal a day.  Children are the first to suffer from severe malnutrition (including starvation), that may lead to problems long after this crisis has subsided. In fact, the UN has estimated that 330,600 children under age five have or will fall victim to this year's drastic food shortage in Niger.   

To help alleviate the pressure that this year’s food crisis has placed on our villages, we are developing both a short-to-medium term as well as a long-term strategy.  For immediate relief, we plan on helping supply their food banks. As a longer term solution, we will continue supporting agricultural/gardening efforts by introducing a drip irrigation project (based on the premise of using the borehole sustainably to grow food).  We will eventually propose a small ruminant program for the women. However, for the time being, the people must feed themselves before they have the luxury to feed their animals.

On the positive end of things, the drip irrigation project will be less costly than we had anticipated (around $4,000). However, an effective food bank program for the three communities will cost around $20,000, whereas we had budgeted for only $5,000.  We too are falling victim of the soaring grain and food prices.  We are looking into options, such as bringing in cheaper grain from outside the country to lower the cost.

Health and Revenue-Generating Activities
We had planned on conducting health and revenue generating activities along with food based activities.  However, given the communities’ current priorities, and the cost of conducting these activities, we will determine additional projects a few weeks from now.

Positive news from the Field
Despite their current challenges, our communities show ongoing proof of growth and resiliency.  The women of Kijigari continue to cultivate their garden, using both marsh and borehole water.  Thanks to this, they grow squash and zucchini to help supplement their food.

The local government contributed piping and plumbing to bring Kijigari’s borehole water to the village’s health center, one of few such facilities in the remote Azawak.  The health center now has a faucet with running water, and the birthing room has been equipped with a faucet and sink!

Please Join our Holiday Campaign!
We have received some very generous donations for our work this winter.  The Vibrant Village Foundation has given us $130,000, and another devoted supporter and committed friend has pledged $30,000.  We are asking our supporters to help us raise the additional $40,000 by the beginning of the year, to see our projects to fruition, and support ongoing follow-up throughout the year.  Please help!

Here's what you can do:
1) Make a donation.   Large, medium, small - it all adds up to improving lives and bringing water, food, and hope!.
2) Help us fundraise by creating your own fundraising page and reaching out to your community of family and friends. "It takes a village" of people helping to make a difference!
3) Spread the word.   Forward this email; share the links on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Thank you for being a part of our vision to bring water and hope to the Azawak!

Gratefully yours for the Children of the Azawak,
Ariane

A Borehole and a Bag of Rice for the Holidays: A Ray of Hope for Niger

Please contribute to Amman Imman's  activities in Niger this winter.

Dear Friends of the Azawak,

Denis and I are impatient to return to Niger this month, and be welcomed by our dear friends and the smiling, laughing faces of the children we’ve grown to know and love in our Azawak communities.  It will be refreshing to sip tea and share stories with our friends, eat fresh vegetables that they’ve been able to grow thanks to the borehole water and listen to songs the children have learned since they’ve begun attending the school that has opened now that water has become available.

As many of you may be aware, Niger has been in the news non-stop this year – and as portrayed by the media, the situation is nothing but dire and foreboding for this landlocked country of the Sahel.  Denis and I plan on sharing with you the flip side over the next couple of months – stories of dignity, perseverance, and hope.   In fact, today I will share with you a joyous new headline:

Amman Imman, soon to build a new borehole
for 25,000 people and animals,
thereby offering water and food security
in a time of famine and crisis!

Let’s back up one step, as I recap news from the media about Niger in 2011.  In January, Al Qaeda kidnapped two Frenchmen, who were both killed in a failed rescue attempt.  All spring and summer, headlines focused on refugees fleeing Libya and entering Niger (a large number have fled to the Azawak).  Last month we witnessed the death of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.  Though Gaddafi was a tyrant in the eyes of the world, he was often seen as a benefactor by the Tuaregs of Niger. While the rest of the world looked away, he offered assistance on the ground and jobs inside Libya. With his demise, the aid has dried up and almost everyone lost their jobs, removing not only a source of revenue but also causing an influx of refugees who are traumatized and find an impossibly bleak situation in the Azawak.  To top off such a challenging year, headlines now announce one of the worst droughts since 2005 in Niger, where there has been up to 90% crop loss.  Drought and famine have already begun ravishing the country.   This parade of bad news has contributed to Niger once again being named second to last in the most recent Human Development Index.

Just a few days ago, we spoke with Momine, Amman Imman’s Niger Operations Coordinator.  Echoing media headlines, he lamented: “There is no food.  Millet and rice prices have skyrocketed, if you are lucky enough to find them on the market.  Before, our families used to head to Libya when we were dying of hunger and thirst.  But today, we have nowhere to go.”

Our most recent news of hope could not be better timed.

As many of you know, Amman Imman has food and revenue generating projects lined up for the fall and winter.  We’ve been planning to do our utmost to help as many families and communities as possible survive this famine, as well as meet the extra demands created by the influx of refugees.  Then, just last week, I received a call from the Vibrant Village Foundation announcing that they have pledged $130,000 to help cover a majority of the costs needed to build a new borehole.  With a new borehole, our impact in terms of both water and food security will be multiplied. The Vibrant Village Foundation has offered a huge ray of hope that will help save many as they struggle through this new year of severe food and water shortage.  We will share photos and stories of comforted villagers and dancing children celebrating this news as soon as we can!

We still need to raise $70,000 to cover the remainder of the borehole costs, as well as our food and revenue-generating activities.  Like many of the challenges that Nigeriens face on a daily basis, raising this amount before the end of the year may seem insurmountable.  Yet we know that nothing is insurmountable.  With your help, combined with the help of all our friends of the Azawak, we trust that our goal will be reached to offer thousands of rays of hope, gallons of precious life-giving water, and large plates of nutritious food to fill empty bellies in the Azawak this holiday season.

Please…offer your ray of hope for the Azawak, for a borehole, food and jobs.

Very sincerely yours,

Ariane

P.S. To donate now, please visit www.ammanimman.org/donate 
or send your check to:

Amman Imman: Water is Life
7036 Strathmore Street, Suite 111
Chevy Chase, MD 20815