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