Is EPN able to continue with its mission?

During these challenging times of COVID, many have asked us if Eliminate Poverty NOW! is able to continue its mission of “Empowering Africa’s extreme poor to lift themselves out of poverty” – and the answer is a resounding YES! Poverty cannot take a hiatus due to COVID or for any other reason. The people we serve are constantly hurdling obstacles and all the more in these trying times.

While wildfires have raged in the western US, Niger has been pummeled by torrential rains resulting in flooding conditions they have not seen in nearly 100 years. Areas bordering the Niger River are the hardest hit. Fortunately, most of our sites have been spared, including the area where the new DOV Center campus is being constructed. However, the DOV Center Training Gardens along with the neighboring Ecole Centre gardens, both located closer to the river, have been flooded. We will not know the extent of the damage until the waters fully recede.

Rice fields and farms that border the Niger River are still under water and there is a real concern that food shortages will occur in the coming months. Many residents with mud homes damaged or destroyed by the floods have been forced to live in tents and some are sheltering in school buildings. All this is happening during a pandemic in a country with little or no real infrastructure in place.

Disaster relief is not part of our mission, but EPN and Pencils4Kids (our Canadian NGO partner) have each pledged $5,000 to purchase whatever assistance is most needed in the communities where we work. At some point we may want to increase that support based on final assessments of the damage.

Yet, despite these challenges, we continue to move forward with plans to create the preeminent training center for horticulture in Niger.  Architectural plans for The Dov Center have been finalized and we are identifying construction companies to bid on the project. We are conducting a national job search for the school’s Director General.  The application for accreditation with Niger’s Ministry of Higher Education must include partnership agreements with other organizations in the field and we are assembling an outstanding group of partners!  ICRISAT has already signed on and we are finalizing agreements with the Songhai Center and Volcani, the agricultural science arm of Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture.  COVID-permitting, we are on track to open our doors in Q4 2021.

Turning to Kenya and Little Rock - COVID numbers continue to run high. The Kenyan government shuttered public schools in March and has announced tentative plans to reopen them in January 2021. Remote learning in Kenya is not a realistic option, given the lack of computers and internet connections.  Lily Oyare, Little Rock’s founder and principal, says that they have been printing and distributing lessons to the primary school age children, but the preschool is closed. And our Little Rock Scholars do their best to stay engaged academically from home.

To sum up, we are doing the best we can under challenging circumstances, making as much progress as conditions allow, and planning for a major milestone in 2021 with the opening of The Dov Center.

John Craig gives Farmers of the Future Presentation

John Craig, Founder and President of Eliminate Poverty NOW!, was asked to give a presentation on Smart Farming - emphasizing our work with Farmers of the Future - to a local environmental group. Please give a listen to what he had to say - it is informative and educational.

Eliminate Poverty NOW! 2019 Annual Report

2019 – the tenth year for Eliminate Poverty NOW! - was another busy one! We are concentrating on two major projects in cooperation with our partners - NGO LIBO in Niger and Little Rock Inclusive Early Childhood Learning Centre in Kenya. Check out the Annual Report which will give you insight into all we accomplished last year. 

The "Dov Center"

We’re thrilled that rural economic development has become a top priority in Niger.  We’re even more thrilled to see major funders like the World Bank and Millennium Challenge Corporation pledge hundreds of millions of dollars to increase farmer profitability.  It hasn’t always been this way.

For years, “food security” has been the main focus in agricultural development, enabling farmers to grow enough food to feed themselves and their families.  We’ve always felt this was important.  Nobody wants people to starve.  But it can still leave millions impoverished and malnourished.  Food security is not enough.  The bar must be raised, enabling farmers to achieve “economic security” and lift themselves out of chronic poverty.  That’s the goal of Farmers of the Future and we’re thrilled to see that philosophy become a national priority.

In a country as bone-dry as Niger, irrigation is key to unlocking the economic potential of the land.  Lots of money will be spent on infrastructure for wells, solar panels, water distribution systems and more to bring irrigation to rural areas.  But infrastructure isn’t enough.  Farmers must learn to grow and sell crops for maximum profit.  It’s very different from the way they’ve farmed for generations.  Mastering new concepts and techniques takes time and lots of intensive training and supervision by knowledgeable technicians.  There’s only one problem.  Those technicians are in desperately short supply.

So …. welcome to “The Dov Center.”  Named in honor of Dov Pasternak, father of Farmers of the Future, we are creating the pre-eminent horticultural training center in Niger.  The Dov Center will train the trainers, teaching them best practices in horticulture, strategies to turn vegetables and fruits into profitable businesses, and techniques to effectively teach what they learn to illiterate farmers.

We’re still raising money to build the main campus (classrooms, library, science lab, offices, and dormitory), but the training garden where theory is turned into practice is largely complete.  Judy and I toured the garden and it’s impressive.

Touring the “Dov Center” Garden

We’ve installed 5 different irrigation systems so students can work with the irrigation methods they are most likely to encounter on the job.  The garden will produce all its own compost and demonstrate the impact of proper soil nutrition on crop yields.  There is a vegetable nursery to ready seedlings for transplanting, a seed multiplication area, a tree grafting facility, and a post-harvest storage area.  Students will grow crops year-round in Niger’s 3 distinct growing seasons and learn the techniques for growing counter-seasonally so crops reach the market as prices peak. 

One morning we invited mayors from three counties slated to receive millions of dollars for agricultural development to tour the garden.  And the overwhelming reaction was “formidable!” (That’s French for “wonderful”)  In fact, after the meeting they called their Millennium Challenge contact to ensure we were invited to submit proposals to develop gardens in their communities.  Of course, their enthusiasm doesn’t guarantee anything.  But it sure doesn’t hurt!

The Dov Center will greatly expand Niger’s technical capacity in horticulture and help achieve the rural economic development the country so desperately needs.  And that would make Dov extremely proud!

Here’s a Picture Worth More Than a Thousand Words

We all know the old saying.  As a piece of art this picture is worth no more than the plywood it’s drawn on.  But as a plan to maximize profit for this 4-acre Farmers of the Future vegetable garden, it’s worth over $100,000! And for 50 women from this rural village in Niger, that’s a lot of money!!!  Let me explain.

These days the largest and most impressive FOF gardens are located in the county of Balleyara, a 100-kilometer drive north of Niamey.  Five cooperatives were struggling when we received funding from USAID to take them over. Two and a half years later the gardens are lush and productive.  We arrived for our site visits just as the women were about to harvest tons of onions and potatoes.

Ballyera women farmers

Enjoying their success

What’s the secret behind that success?  We provide intensive training and supervision for a three-year period of time, hopefully long enough for women to master farming as a business.  But what happens when we wean them off support?  Will they sustain that success?  The question is particularly challenging since almost all our women are illiterate.  How can they record technical information, retain it and retrieve it as needed?  We believe a big part of the answer is pictorial.

The Giant Piece of Plywood

The $100,000 picture!

For example, cooperatives must be able make their own annual crop plan.  To maximize profits women need to select which crops to grow, when to plant them, when to harvest and when to sell as prices peak.  The drawing in the photo shows exactly that.  The women create symbols for each of the 12 months.  They draw pictures of the various crops and develop additional symbols to identify the activities of planting, growing, harvesting and selling.  The whole annual plan on one giant piece of plywood!

During our visit to Balleyara, we asked one woman at each site to talk us through the plan.  And they really knew their stuff.  They rattled off all the details of what, when, how and why.

Today sustainability is the central focus of our work in gardens under direct FOF control.  It’s an opportunity to develop a unique competence in this frequently overlooked but absolutely critical aspect of rural economic development.  And it will become a featured topic in the curriculum at our Horticultural Training Center now under construction.  More about the Center in the next post.

The New Niger

Judy and I returned from our latest Africa trip about a week ago.  As always, it was hugely productive and thoroughly exhausting.  But with batteries now recharged, I’d like to share a few stories about this year’s trip.  Let’s start at the beginning and our surprise at the “New Niger”.

Okay, let me preface what you’re about to read by saying that in 2019 Niger again finished dead last among 189 countries on the UN Human Development Index, and 186th on the basis of per capita income.  That said, landing in Niger this year we saw signs of progress everywhere.

For Judy, seeing Niger for the first time in many years, she was struck by the change.  And even since my visit last January the progress was impressive and encouraging.  For starters, our flight from Paris hit the ground and taxied up to a new, beautiful (and fully air conditioned!) airport terminal.  Wonderful!  We drove from the airport to our hotel in Niamey, Niger’s capital, on wide, newly paved roads.  The hotel we stayed at had been open less than a year, part of a high-end chain built by a Barcelona-based company.  Rooms were comfortable and smartly furnished, the food was very good, and the staff was friendly and attentive.  For years we described the best hotel in Niger as comparable to a 40-year old Holiday Inn in moderate disrepair.  This was a huge step up.

What triggered this spurt of modernization?  Niger was named to host the African Union Summit held in July 2019.  To upgrade the country’s infrastructure, a Turkish company financed the new airport in a public-private partnership.  The government of India gave Niger $50 million dollars to build a beautiful convention center with a 20,000-seat arena.  Indeed, India plans to build 20 such convention centers across Africa - high profile infrastructure projects designed to strengthen India’s economic relationships on the continent.  And to help lodge all those attending the Summit, several new hotels were built with international funding.

Outside the capital, progress is evident as well. Judy noticed a big change on our 30-minute drive from Niamey to the county of Liboré, the site of our Farmers of the Future pilot sites and home office of our NGO partner LIBO.  “I see fields of lettuce and vegetables all along the roadside now.  Long stretches that were barren last time I was here are now green.  And vendors are selling lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.  Farming for profit is starting to take off.”

There’s a new focus on farming as a core strategy for rural economic development in Niger.  And we’re hoping to play an important role with our Farmers of the Future initiative.  More on that in the next post.

It Takes A Village - Part 3

Just to recap, we’re trying desperately to get copies of the French edition of Dov’s book to Niger in time for meetings with potential partners the first week of February.  After running a marathon for the last 2 years to translate, layout and print the French edition, we are feet away from the finish line!

It’s now 9 am in Tel Aviv on Monday, January 26th and 10 copies of Prospérité Agricole en Afrique Sèche are sitting at the publisher’s front desk.  FedEx informs us that if the books are picked up in Tel Aviv Monday afternoon, they will arrive in New Jersey Wednesday morning just in time to take on our flight leaving the next day.  What could be easier, right?  WRONG!

For FedEx to pick up the package at the publisher’s office we need to prepare a label in advance.  But we don’t have a FedEx account and after hours talking with the FedEx Help Desk and online at the FedEx website it’s becoming clear we won’t be able to create one.  We ask the publisher if he has a FedEx account and can prepare the label on his end.  After all, he must ship books all over the world.  We don’t quite understand his answer to the question, but he makes it clear his business is book publishing, not international shipping.  (With 20/20 hindsight we expect this was the voice of experience talking.)  

Another day goes by.  It’s now Tuesday, January 27th and we’re running out of time to ship the books to the US.  So, we move to Plan B – ship them directly to Africa.  You may think this should have been our obvious choice from the start, but shipping to Africa is never as easy as it sounds.  DHL is the best choice for shipping to Niger, so we begin working with them.  We call the DHL Help Desk in the US and ask how to arrange for the delivery.  We learn it’s a simple matter once we have a DHL account and an international importing license.  This should only take 3-5 business days to set up!

We then call DHL Israel and ask if there isn’t a way to create a shipping label without an account and license.  “No problem,” they say.  “You just need to use the DHL Israel website: DHL.co.il”.   We immediately log onto the local system and start inputting the pick-up and delivery information.  All is going really well until we get to the payment screen.  We input our credit card information, but the system won’t accept it.  There’s an option to use PayPal but the system won’t accept that either.  Could be a problem with using an international rather than Israeli credit card.  Or it could be that the system has no intention of shipping to Niger.

In hopes that it’s the former, we call our friend Joanne Moore noontime Eastern time/ 8 pm Tel Aviv time.  As you may recall, Joanne is the newest member of the EPN Board and just happens to live in Tel Aviv.  We explain the situation and Joanne immediately agrees to help.  So we send her all the pickup and delivery information.  “It should only take 10 minutes to enter it on the website and print out a label,” I say, still not fully grasping what we’re up against.

At 7 am Wednesday morning EST, I see an email from Joanne in my inbox.  She has spent several frustrating hours at the website and with 4 different people from the DHL Help Desk and still cannot generate a shipping label.  She is pretty sure the sad truth is that we need to put the books on a slow boat to the US where we’ll pick them up after we return from Africa and put them on a slow boat to Niger.  But she has written a blistering online complaint to the Director of DHL Israel saying it’s a sad commentary that they can’t find a way to pick up a package at Point A in Tel Aviv and deliver it to Point B in Niger.  It’s supposed to be their core competency after all.

Well, that did the trick!  Barely 15 minutes after sending the complaint letter, Joanne receives the shipping documents and forwards them to the publisher.  DHL shows up at the publisher’s office that afternoon and on Friday morning we receive these photos from our partner in Niger.  Books delivered!!

The Niger team is proud to show off Professor Dov’s book

IT TAKES A VILLAGE!

It Takes a Village – Part 2

In the last post I shared how a French edition of Dov’s book Agricultural Prosperity in Dry Africa became a top priority.  So you may be wondering why it took almost 2 years to create Prospérité Agricole en Afrique Sèche.  Well, when you have multiple top priorities, limited staff and little money to work with, things just take longer than you expect.  Making matters worse, we knew nothing about how to create and publish a book.  So we had to learn.

Step 1:  Create an accurate French translation of the English.  No doubt we could have hired a professional translator to do the job.  But that would be costly.  So, the next time Robin Mednick and I were in Niger, we asked our best English-speaking friend, Gaston Kaba, if he would make the initial translation.  “An honor,” Gaston said, “but it may take me awhile.”  “Take whatever time you need,” we said.  “And don’t worry.  We’ll have the editor’s French team review your work and tighten up the wording wherever needed.” 

Several months later Gaston sent us his translation which we turned over to Contento’s French translation team for final editing.  They sent back their corrections but when we opened the files sentences were mangled, and the formatting was often bizarre.  Turns out when you use a Hebrew edition of Word, strange things can happen.  Plus several members of our Niger team had earlier versions of Word which further compounded the problem.  Suffice it to say, we lost several weeks before we had a final translation of the text we all felt comfortable with.

Step 2:  Create a final layout.  Dov’s book contains over 50 photos and charts which must be integrated with the text to create a final layout.  We toyed with doing this ourselves.  But no one in our universe was familiar with layout software and we worried, especially after our experience with gremlins in the Word document, that this could be a challenge for even an experienced layout pro.  So, when Judy and I were in Israel this past October, we met with Contento and agreed on a price for them to produce the final layout.  We also said we were leaving on our next trip to Africa in late January and wanted to bring copies of the French edition with us for meetings with key partners.  “We’ll do our best,” the publisher said.

Sure enough, on December 8th the publisher sent a 262-page layout of the book for our final review.  We shared copies with our Niger team, with Robin in Canada, and with EPN’s proofreader-in-chief (aka Judy).  Judy has the innate ability (she calls it the proofreader’s curse) to spot every undotted “i” and uncrossed “t.”  She and the Niger team spent the next few weeks meticulously reviewing the layout.  They found numerous disparities between the text and layout in English and French.  It took a while to discover that, in fact, there were 2 versions of the English book. After its initial publication, Dov had created an updated edition – adding and deleting passages to create something he was happier with.

By the second week of January we turn over our “new final” version of the text.  Now timing is getting really tight.  The publisher must layout 262 new pages, return them to us for final approval, print initial quantities, and ship them to New Jersey before we leave for Africa on January 30th.  Impossible?  Almost!

Step 3:  Publish the book.  On Friday, January 24th we receive the final layout from the publisher.  On Saturday, January 25th we give the publisher our thumbs up.  On Sunday January 26th the first 10 copies are printed in Israel and the French edition of Dov’s book is officially born!!  Now we just need to airfreight them from Tel Aviv to New Jersey in time for our flight on Thursday, January 30th.  Should be no problem, right?  WRONG!

In a third post I’ll share the final heroics needed to deliver Prospérité Agricole en Afrique Sèche to Niger in time for our February meetings.

Professor Dov Pasternak greeted by devoted village women farmers

It Takes A Village - Part 1

Several years before he died, Dov Pasternak, father of Farmers of the Future, took the time to capture all his experiences and philosophy in a book he called Agricultural Prosperity in Dry Africa.  In typical Dov fashion it’s funny, opinionated and full of stories about the obstacles to successful agricultural development in Africa and the keys to actually make it happen.  It’s a very important book.

On his last trip to Niger, Dov and I met a man from the World Bank responsible for implementing one of its main agricultural programs.  The book had just been published so we left him a copy.  A year later I returned (sadly without Dov this time) and met with the man again.  He said he opened Dov’s book one evening and couldn’t put it down. He stayed up all night reading it.  “A real page-turner,” he said.  “Full of so much important information.  But if you really want to change minds in West Africa, the book needs to be available in French.”  “Sacré bleu! Il a raison,” I thought.  Or something like that.  So a French edition of Dov’s book became an important priority.

When Dov died in 2018, Robin (president of our sister NGO Pencils for Kids), Judy, and I flew to Israel to meet his daughters and pay our respects.  During the visit we mentioned our desire to create a French edition of the book and they gladly gave their permission.  Contento, the Israeli publisher of the English version, also thought it was a great idea.  And so the journey began to create Prospérité Agricole en Afrique Sèche.

On January 31, 2020, two years after we recognized the need for a French edition, the first copies were delivered to Niger in time for important meetings with current and potential partners.  In the next 2 posts I’ll share the story of how the team from Niger, Israel, Canada, and the US worked together through endless ups and downs to make it happen.

Professor Dov Pasternak

Off to Africa!

Hi All –

John here.  Judy and I are off to Africa for 2 weeks in February.  We’ll be 10 days in Niger and 4 days in Kenya, meeting with our local partners on Farmers of the Future and the Little Rock Scholars program.  We’ve been working with Hamani Djibo and his LIBO team in Niger for 10 years and with Lilly Oyare and her staff at the Little Rock School in Nairobi for 12.  We enjoy spending time with old friends, but still manage to cram a month or two of work into 2 short weeks.

Keep an eye out for updates on our trip in future posts.

John

John Craig, EPN Founder, with Robin Mednick, NGO Partner, meeting at Sadore village