Tanamert wooley! Thank you very much!

Please consider making an end-of-year tax-deductible gift to Amman Imman  Tree planted in 2012 grows in Ebagueye Here are some examples of how your donations help: $10 = one tree  $25 = two mosquito nets for a family  $50 = school supplies for a child $100 = craft supplies for a woman   $250 = gardening tools for a family  $500 = two goats to start a herd for a woman  $1000 = one cow to supply milk to a family Women receiving their goats  Please send in your funds through our website or mail us a check: Amman Imman 914 Robin Road,  Silver Spring, MD 20901

Dear Friends and Devoted Supporters,

As 2014 draws to a close, we wish you and your families a wonderful holiday season, and send you a message from our Azawak communities:

Tanamert wooley!  Thank you very much! 

We could not continue helping the children and families in the Azawak without your support and precious contributions.  You cannot imagine how grateful our Amman Imman team and communities are for your love and compassion. Contributions like yours have helped us enjoy a fulfilling year in the Azawak, where we continue to witness our communities grow and prosper thanks to ongoing projects, and various new activities. 

Filling empty bellies
At the beginning of the year, many of our families cried out for help to feed their children. While their borehole provides them with plentiful water, grain prices continue to skyrocket due to perpetual and ongoing drought. Hunger has become a primary cause of desperation. We helped as we could by providing affordable grain to the poorest. Thanks to the Tangarwashane, Couloubade, and Ebagueye cereal banks, children went to school bellies filled, and eager to use their new school books in their new school room provided by Amman Imman. Profits from the cereal bank are used to purchase additional grain, to counter the cycle of hunger.

Empowering women
With happier and healthier children, women could focus on other activities. For instance, women felt empowered by our various skills training programs, including sewing, management training, and literacy and counting. Many of our most vulnerable women felt much more financially secure thanks to our goat project, the artisan cooperative, and new jobs provided by the boutique, fodder and cereal banks.

Developing communities
Our boreholes continue to provide amazing relief, where children are generally much healthier, and everyone has more time to work, go to school, and enjoy a higher quality of life. We are training several young men from our communities over two years to become professional borehole mechanics. Our goal is to not only help improve the skills of men and women, but also to increase the autonomy of our communities as they become their own experts. 

Protection from malaria
Our mosquito net project was very popular. In Ebagueye alone, parents reported a significant decrease in malaria related illness. Whereas in previous years, the village chief traveled to Abalak almost daily during the rainy season to take children for emergency care to the clinic, this year he only made occasional trips to the clinic, as malaria-related sickness dropped considerably. 

Working towards resiliency
Our communities are extraordinarily grateful for all our projects, including gardening, latrines, mosquito nets, boutiques, grain mills, and more. While there is still a lot of work to be done, our activities bring them one step closer to vibrancy and resiliency, and changes their lives for the better.

Plans for 2015
We are excited to launch the New Year with our new nomadic heath clinic for all our communities, and we hope to build a borehole in a new community before the end of 2015. We want to increase our work with children in the Azawak and students around the world, as we recognize their tremendous potential as the true long-term change makers for the Azawak. We’ll be excited to keep sharing our progress with you throughout next year!

With wishes of love and peace, and extreme gratitude, 

Ariane, the entire Amman Imman team, and our Azawak communities

Why you Should Donate to Smaller Non-Profits on #GivingTuesday

by Tina Burchette, Volunteer Blog Writer for Amman Imman: Water is Life

With all of the negative things going on in the world as of late, this holiday season is a perfect time to focus on the good. #GivingTuesday comes right on the heels of Thanksgiving and its subsequent consumer-based holidays, and I hope that everyone gives a donation, no matter how small, to an organization that does something great for the world.

I want to give a shout out to smaller non-profits for all of the work that they do. If you were to ask any person on the street to list a few of the non-profits they are aware of, these non-profits probably wouldn’t be on their list. However, we cannot ignore the fact that these organizations do necessary and selfless things for the world, regardless of their size and scope.

The inevitable fact is that no matter how big or how well-known a non-profit may be, it cannot do everything. It cannot save everyone. It may have a hefty and inspiring mission statement, but there are some things that they cannot and will not do. That is why I am choosing to donate money to the small non-profit that I volunteer with as a blog writer, Amman Imman: Water is Life.

When Ariane Kirtley, our founder, was doing research in West Africa, she was made aware

of a devastating situation. There is a region called the Azawak, situated in both Niger and Mali, that is so water-deprived that the inhabitants had to walk up to 30 miles every day just to find water, many times not finding any. Global warming has also taken its toll on the region, making the rainy season shorter than it has ever been before. Not to mention, any water available to the people of the Azawak was severely contaminated. However, there is a significantly-sized aquifer underneath the region that is able to provide a clean and permanent water source to these peoples. Ariane knew that this issue was the responsibility of developmental organizations and the government, so she reached out and asked for help.

These organizations, the ones that any person could list off if they were asked what non-

profits they knew about, were unable to provide assistance. They said the area was too poor and remote, that there was no infrastructure, that it was too dangerous. This is not to say that these organizations should be scorned or that what they can do is any less deserving of our awe and respect. It is simply a matter of fact that no organization can do it all. So Ariane founded Amman Imman, and our focus is specifically in the Azawak region. We have constructed a several boreholes, and we have remained in the area to provide programs that lead to stability in health, education, and food levels. We have built personal relationships with the people we help. The people of the Azawak are receiving the time and dedication of Amman Imman that could not have been provided for them by a bigger non-profit.

Perhaps one of the inspiring parts about Amman Imman is that many of our donors and fundraisers are young children. The education that we provide works both ways: we educate the people of the Azawak in the ways they can sustain themselves, and we educate the more fortunate to become what we call “heroes of compassion.” We are teaching values that we believe will result in a more global society, while also inspiring young people to reach out and help their brothers and sisters who are less fortunate than themselves. Although our non-profit is small, I couldn’t be any prouder to volunteer for them. I know my small part is relief to them, because it allows the more central members to focus on the more imperative tasks in order to achieve our mission.

Annual "A Walk for Water" engages students as
Heroes of Compassion who reach out and help.

So I ask all givers to really reflect upon which organizations they will be donating to on #GivingTuesday, and hopefully for the rest of their lives. We should absolutely support big non-profits that we know make a large difference, but we should also think of the little guys. They take on the tasks that nobody can, and they focus on that task until they can bring it to fruition. It doesn’t matter if they are providing water to poverty-stricken people of Africa, or simply building wheelchairs for those who can’t afford to buy one. Their smaller task is just as important as the larger tasks that are already receiving significant funding, and they need our support. Find a non-profit that aims to do something you can really get behind, and donate. Your donation will go a long way.

To learn more about Amman Imman: Water is Life visit here.

#GivingTuesday and Giving Back to Improve Lives

Dear Friends of the Azawak,

We hope your Thanksgiving was filled with love and gratitude. As the holiday shopping

Ebagueye women wait to have their grain
pounded into flour at their grain mill.

season begins, please join Amman Imman and #GivingTuesday, a world-wide movement that celebrates generosity and giving back. It culminates with a global day of giving on December 2, 2014 that coincides with the Thanksgiving Holiday and the kickoff of the holiday shopping season.

As you consider joining the movement by contributing to our work in the Azawak, I want to continue sharing all the life enhancing activities that we accomplished this past year with you.

Along with helping to supply affordable food and grow skills through vocational training, we strived to help improve the lives of the men, children and women in various other ways, as well as increase their job opportunities and revenue.  

Grain Mills to Facilitate Food Preparation

The Ebagueye miller has been trained to use the machines.
Income is divided into three: the miller makes
a third of the profits, a third goes into maintenance,
and the rest goes to support the women's cooperative.

Women and girls in particular rejoiced upon the arrival of the Ebagueye and Couloubade grain mills, which transform grain into flour. The women and girls used to spend over two and a half hours pounding their grain every single day! Now, all they have to do is take their grain to the miller, and in less than a half hour, they can prepare a nice meal for their entire family. The miller himself is also proud to have a paying job for the first time, as he makes a profit selling his services.  

Couloubade Community Store

Gotchi and Tonguindo are Couloubade's
Boutique managers. They enjoy
earning a small income from
boutique profits.

Similar to the community store we built in Ebagueye last year, we built Couloubade a community store. Parents are relieved to be able to purchase shoes, cloth, sugar, pasta, matches and other items nearby rather than walking over ten miles round-trip for such goods. The two women that run the boutique are excited to make $20 a month each, as they increase their economic autonomy. The boutique in Ebagueye is growing, and the boutique managers have set aside money to build an extension to provide additional goods.

Ebagueye Gardens

The children and women of Ebagueye were excited to learn how to garden with Adam, our professional gardener from the Kijigari borehole community. They have begun growing potatoes, carrots, zucchini, pumpkin, watermelon, and other seasonal vegetables. We also planted mango, papaya, and other fruit bearing trees, including a fruit called the “desert apple” in all our communities.

Adam, the president of our Kijigari borehole Management Committee,
teaches gardening to men, women, and children
in our other borehole communities. Here he is showing off
 a "desert apple" tree that he planted a few years ago.

In my next installment, I’ll tell you about our women’s livestock project in Ebagueye and Couloubade, which has had a tremendous impact on the economic security of our women!  

Warm thoughts and best wishes this holiday season!! Again, please do join us for #GivingTuesday!!

Ariane

Building Skills to Build Lives, Thankfully!

Dear Friends of the Azawak,

We are grateful for your support! 30 women and several men became members of our Ebagueye sewing cooperative. After two weeks of training, teacher and students   show some newly-made garments. Hundreds of men and women are learning to read, count and manage their projects.

As Thanksgiving approaches, we would like to send a special thank you for your ongoing support. We are so grateful to you, and the inspiration you offer as we work tirelessly for our communities in the Azawak. We also give thanks to those of you who have joined our Solidarity Challenge Campaign. The Challenge is still going on, and you can still participate! Click here to learn more.

I wanted to tell you more about our newest skill building and vocational training projects, as we strive to bring sustainable vibrancy to our communities. Amman Imman has a multilayered approach for tackling the extreme poverty of the people we help. While we first address their most basic needs, we also work to improve their economic growth and autonomy. To help meet this goal, we provide skills training in various domains. The men and women of our communities are talented and eager to learn.  

In Ebagueye we launched a sewing cooperative for the women. Over thirty women (and two men, because they were so enthusiastic about the project) joined, and are now learning how to make clothes, pillow cases, and all sorts of textiles for their families.

In Couloubade, we are offering literacy courses to teach the men and women how to read and count so that they can be even more successful conducting and managing their various activities. The borehole management committee members and the boutique managers hardly miss a class!  Counting skills have been especially beneficial to the women that sell their medicines in Nigeria and Chad.  They better understand the value of their work, and have learned to identify when people attempt to rip them off!  

We are also training a few men from the communities to become professional mechanics, with yearlong courses and hands-on experience in Niamey. Like this, community members themselves will be borehole mechanics experts.  Not only will they be able to maintain our boreholes on an ongoing basis, but they can be hired as professional vehicle and borehole mechanics elsewhere.

In our next installment, I’ll tell you how we’ve been helping with grain mills, gardens, and more…

Sincerely yours,

Ariane

Helping our Azawak communities fill empty bellies

With a cereal bank started in Couloubade, this mother will have grain to feed her child.

Since last year, people in Ebagueye have had a steady supply of grain at an affordable price through their cereal bank.

Dear Friends of the Azawak,

We are so grateful to the many of you who responded to our last update. We received generous donations, several tweets, likes, and shares on social media, and numerous messages of encouragement. Thank you for being an ongoing inspiration!

Solidarity Challenge!

I want to invite you to participate in our second Solidarity Challenge Campaign, that begins on October 27th and continues through the month of November. Do something fun to raise awareness and or funds, and directly help save and improve the lives of our friends in Niger. Stay tuned for details!

Cereal Banks to Relieve Hunger

Hunger is a primary cause of sickness and desperation faced by the children and the families that we help. Initally, and perhaps naively, we thought that if they had water, they would be able to feed themselves. While this is not entirely untrue, we underestimated the sheer poverty of our communities. Water is not yet enough to combat the unremitting lack of access to food.

This reality hit me hard when I heard that “our” children were going days without eating. Our women were desperate. Persistent drought throughout the Western Sahara sub region meant that millet and rice prices have soared at four times their normal price. Our people might have water to drink and to grow small gardens at different times of the year, but this is not yet enough to feed them enough on a continual and reliable basis.

Thanks to the cereal bank we built last year in Ebagueye, we saw promising results for combatting malnutrition and hunger in the community. Even nurses in Abalak have noted that children from Ebagueye are healther in general than children from other villages thanks to their clean water and access to enough food.

Wanting to replicate our Ebagueye results, we built cereal banks for the communities of Tangarwashane and Couloubade. Like the Ebagueye cereal bank, these banks are managed by a woman-run management committee. The committee sells the grain -- which we have provided -- for a much cheaper price than it is found on the market. The profits are used to pay the bank manager a small stipend, and to purchase additional grain. So even though it’s always a challenge for our populations to pay for food, at least in these communities they can rely on a steady supply of affordable grain. We are thrilled to see that past empty bellies are being filled and that our children are growing thanks to proper nourishment!

Thank you for continuing to support our work with your contributions, social network sharing, and overall feedback.

Sincerely yours, 

Ariane

Alhassan and Sadouan from Tangarwashane are relieved to have 

affordable millet to feed their children.