In the Segou region of Mali, 82 percent of households polled in a recent survey live on less than $1.25 a day. The typical village is more than 14 miles from a paved road. As a result, few people have access to resources that many of us take for granted—like a place to save and borrow money, for example.

Enter Saving for Change, an innovative program from Oxfam America, Freedom from Hunger, and the Strømme Foundation. Focusing on rural villages like those in Segou, the program trains groups of women to save regularly; they borrow from their group’s fund to build small businesses or homes, or to buy essentials for their families. Members then repay loans from the group with interest. The model has taken off, and Saving for Change now has 680,000 members in 13 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. (Read what members in Guatemala and in Senegal are saying about their experiences.)

Women from the Banakoro village Saving for Change group in Mali hand in their weekly savings contributions during a meeting in 2009. Photo: Rebecca Blackwell/Oxfam America

In Mali, where some of the first Saving for Change groups were founded, Oxfam and Freedom From Hunger conducted a three-year study exploring the impacts of the program. The results of the study, released last Friday, show that households in villages with savings groups experienced an 8 percent increase in food security and saved 31 percent more on average.

The groups helped in other ways, too. The study showed that the value of livestock held by households in participating villages increased by 13 percent compared to families in villages without the program. “Livestock are a critical safety net for families. The animals are a form of savings that can be sold in hard times. Imagine if your home value or stock portfolio increased by 13 percent—it could be game-changing for your family,” said Freedom from Hunger President Steve Hollingworth.

Learn more about Saving for Change and the results of the study here.

Nanaï Touré imitates how she covered her head when the armed groups arrived in Konna on January 10. Photo: Habibatou Gologo/Oxfam

January 10, 2013: it’s a day that Nanaï Touré*, and other residents of Konna, Mali, will never forget.

Konna is a small city near the border between northern and southern Mali, the main dividing line of the current conflict. The city was home to about 41,000 people, mostly farmers, herders, fishermen, and traders. When armed rebel groups from the north arrived in January, followed closely by the French airstrikes that were targeting them, 90 percent of the population fled the city within a day, joining hundreds of thousands of displaced Malians.

“I live in the third district of Konna near the fishing port, which was partially destroyed by an airstrike,” said Touré. “When the armed groups came  to Konna on January 10, like other inhabitants of Konna I fled by pirogue [a small, flat-bottomed boat] to the surrounding village of Diantakaye because a projectile fell on the roof of my hut.

I have three children. I grabbed the youngest to flee and had water up to my shoulders. I asked people to help my husband who is disabled. I didn’t know where my other two children were. But a week after the military intervention, we found each other again at home.”

A few weeks later, Konna’s central city market has reopened and citizens are now returning to their homes, but not without vivid memories, like Touré’s, of fleeing for their lives.

Oxfam is helping displaced people in Mali as well as refugees in Mauritania, Burkina Faso, and Niger with food, water and sanitation services, health and hygiene kits, as well as classroom construction and gender sensitization training in some areas.

Find out how you can support Oxfam’s work to help people affected by the crisis in Mali.

*Not her real name.

What must it be like to know that your community is right around the corner, but conflict keeps you from coming home to your friends and family? In Mali, that’s the situation of 240,000 people in an area the size of Texas. Oxfam is reaching out to see how we can help them.

The complexity of three letters

In humanitarian terms, an internally-displaced person (IDP) is someone who is forced from his or her home, usually due to natural disaster or conflict, and living temporarily in another area of his or her own country. That’s in contrast to a refugee, who is displaced to another country and cannot return home due to a “well-founded fear of being persecuted” for a variety of reasons (race, religion, nationality, etc). IDPs on the other hand may have the same well-founded fear, but as they have not crossed an international border cannot avail themselves of the specific rights under the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. This international law prevents them from, among many things, being “involuntarily repatriated”—they can’t be forced to go home.

I thought recently about the complexity of those three letters – IDP – while speaking with my Senegalese colleague Habibatou Gogolo, Oxfam’s media and communications coordinator in Bamako, Mali. She had just returned from an assessment trip visiting IDP communities.

A focus group with the Oxfam assessment team Sévaré in Hotel des chauffeurs, Mali. In the site known as "Hotel des chauffeurs", local authorities provide accommodation for, according to them, 587 internally displaced persons (IDPs). Photo: Habibatou Gologo/Oxfam

She joined a team of Oxfam experts in water and sanitation services, food security, and civilian protection assessing how (or if) Oxfam can be of service in Sevare, a district of Mopti, which is on the border of southern and northern Mali. In February 2012, shortly after armed groups seized northern Mali, the first people fleeing their homes sought safety in Mopti. So the IDPs in Sevare are among the longest-standing homeless families in Mali.

Habibatou visited one “official” IDP camp that receives services from humanitarian organizations. There are still challenges, like clean water shortages and overcrowded toilets, but life on this site is relatively stable and safe from an outside perspective. Aid organizations distribute food regularly and women are washing clothes as they would at home, but if you look closely, Gogolo says it’s clear that life for these families has been turned upside down.

Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Pablo Tosco/Oxfam

Refugee from Mali in the Mentao Nord camp in Burkina Faso, West Africa. Conflict in northern Mali has displaced roughly 400,000 people, about 160,000 of whom have fled the country, most to Niger, Mauritania, and Burkina Faso. Oxfam has been assisting roughly 150,000 refugees in these countries (as well as the communities that are hosting them), providing clean water and latrines, and promoting good hygiene to reduce vulnerability to diseases. In Mali, Oxfam is helping nearly 60,000 people in the northern part of the country who are in need of food and clean water. We estimate that roughly 2 million people may lack enough food in Mali this year. Armed conflict is restricting access to people in the northern areas where the food needs are most severe, so Oxfam is advocating for humanitarian access and urging the UN to deploy human rights monitors to help stabilize the most insecure areas.

Find out how you can support Oxfam’s work to help people affected by the crisis in Mali.

Photo: Pablo Tosco/Oxfam

Pablo Tosco’s photo of a girl lifting a water jug shows the reality of life for thousands of Malian refugees living in Mentao camp, Burkina Faso.

Since January of last year, more than 370,000 civilians—many of them women and children—have fled northern Mali, with 142,000 finding refuge in neighboring countries such as Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and Niger, and an additional 228,000 displaced in southern Mali.

With the recent escalation of the conflict in Mali, the already dire situation for tens of thousands of Malians could get much worse, according to an Oxfam report published earlier this week. “We call on countries neighboring Mali to continue to keep their borders open to allow refugees a safe haven, and for the UN to show the leadership that is needed to deal with the impact of this conflict on Malian refugees and their hosts,” said Oxfam West Africa regional director Mamadou Biteye.

Oxfam is also providing humanitarian assistance to those displaced by the conflict. Although access to those in need within Mali is limited, we are providing aid to nearly 60,000 people in Mali’s Gao region. And in neighboring Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and Niger, we are aiding 150,000 refugees and the people struggling to host them. Find out how you can support our efforts.

(click on the image to expand the infographic)

A food crisis is now gripping the Sahel region of West Africa. A host of factors–including erratic rainfall, meager harvests, and the lingering effects of an earlier food crisis in 2010–have combined to put more than 18 million people at risk of hunger. For the latest information about who’s affected and where, Oxfam’s response, and how you can help, check out our new infographic above. Then share it with others and help us raise awareness about a crisis that’s not making headlines.

Oxfam is aiming to help 1.2 million people across seven countries with programs that include cash transfers and cash-for-work initiatives, veterinary care for the livestock on which many families depend, and access to clean water and sanitation. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can support our efforts.

Dyenaba Traoré and her daughter, Bintou, carry water to their garden. Photo by Charles Bambara

A colleague the other day sent a computer file of photos from Mali, one of the countries in West Africa where a new food crisis is now threatening 13 million people with hunger.  Drought is among the problems many are struggling with there.

The photos are from the Kayes region near the borders of Senegal and Mauritania where Oxfam’s  partner, Association des Organisations Profesionnelles Paysannes, is working with women’s cooperatives to help families boost their incomes. Gardens are playing a key role in that effort. The pictures showed small plots of plants green and vibrant—amazingly so—in the parched landscape.

I clicked further into the collection and came to a photo of two women, Dyenaba Traoré and her daughter, Bintou, trudging up a steep, sandy slope, each with a bucket of water on her head and one lugging a second bucket by her side. And that’s when it struck me just how precious these patches of green are: It’s the backbreaking labor of women that has made them possible. With local wells running dry and no fuel for a pump to pull water from the River Senegal , Traoré and Bintou are porting water from the river’s edge to keep their vegetables growing.

Studying that picture, I found myself slipping back nearly 40 years to the summer a friend and I had to walk for our water. We were volunteering for a couple of months as fire lookouts and living on a ridge near Mt. Rainier in Washington. Our only source of water was a small, half-frozen lake about a mile’s hike down a steep trail. We dragged the water back up in awkward five-gallon containers. Full, each was about 42 pounds. We dreaded the chore, and back in our lookout, we used that water as sparingly as possible. Neither of us wanted to have to fetch it a moment sooner than was absolutely necessary. Read the rest of this entry »

Note: this blog post originally appeared on Care2 Causes.

Yvette Cissé. Photo: Oxfam America

I met Yvette Cissé a year ago today. The farmer from Yanfollila, Mali, traveled to the US for the first time for Oxfam America’s 2011 International Women’s Day celebration. In the midst of an East Coast speaking tour, Cissé told me about the biggest challenge facing her community: hunger.

“When I was young, we’d eat three meals a day, but that’s not the case anymore,” said the soft-spoken mother of six. She said unpredictable rainfall, combined with chemicals used to grow cotton—Mali’s biggest commercial crop—has weakened the soil and made it hard for farmers to produce enough to earn a living.

As treasurer of an organization called the Malian Organic Movement, Cissé is working toward a solution. Her group trains 8,000 local farmers to use organic growing methods. Going organic improves both the soil and farmers’ incomes, since organic cotton and other products fetch higher prices on the international market.

About a third of the farmers in Cissé’s organization are women. Many are defying gender roles by growing cash crops like cotton, which is traditionally considered men’s work. With support from Oxfam, women members also learn reading, writing, accounting, and entrepreneurial skills. (Mali has a 31 percent literacy rate for women, compared with 47 percent for men.)

“Education has worked wonders,” said Cissé, who said the knowledge gives women confidence to become leaders in their communities. And because women farmers often use their earnings to pay school fees or put food on the table, their children also benefit.

A year later, Oxfam America is celebrating International Women’s Day, March 8, by honoring women who make a difference. Our supporters are giving awards, sending e-cards, and hosting events in recognition of the inspiring women in their lives.

Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Zeenat Potia / Oxfam America

My initial impression of the village of Sirakoro, Mali, was an explosion of color. The women were dressed in bold prints, often with twirled head scarves, and yet their dazzling outfits contrasted sharply with the mud brown backdrop of their village. On the surface level, to my untrained eye, the poverty in Mali was different from the stark, in-your-face urban poverty that I grew up around in Mumbai, India. Here the struggles seemed subtle to a visitor, but were equally if not harsher. No running water or electricity, scarcity of food, and lack of adequate schools—to name a few.

I traveled to Mali recently to attend a conference on Saving for Change, Oxfam’s innovative microfinance program that empowers women through small, rural, community-based autonomous savings and lending groups. Saving for Change is now reaching 300,000 women, in almost half of the 10,000 villages in Mali. We went to six different remote villages and had the opportunity to see the savings groups conduct their meetings, and to talk with individual members about their experiences.

Despite President Obama’s assertion last week in his speech during the Millennium Development Goals Summit that the delivery of medicines to Mali is improving the health systems there, the UNDP statistics on Mali continue to be humbling. The overall illiteracy rate is 73.8 percent, with women faring much worse, and the average life expectancy is 48.1 years.

Yet, here we were witnessing change in difficult circumstances. The savings groups are comprised of about twenty women, and they sit around a circle conducting their business orally, often repeating the amount that each woman contributes, since no written records exist.

Read the rest of this entry »

"Everyone is hungry. There is nothing to eat," says Raha Souley, who was planting beans after some rain finally fell. Photo: Caroline Gluck/Oxfam

Caroline Gluck is a humanitarian press officer for Oxfam. She is reporting from Niger.

I’ve been left with some haunting images over the last few days as I’ve travelled in Niger to document the country’s worsening food crisis.

A mother who brought in her emaciated one year old son to a malnutrition clinic, weighing half the normal average weight for a child of his age.  She was so under-nourished herself that she had no breast milk to feed him.

Families who supplement cassava and millet flour with wild leaves and berries to fill their stomachs.  Proud livestock herders for whom their animals are their sole source of income – literally, their bank accounts–forced to sell them at bargain basement prices.  And a drive through an area I have dubbed the animal graveyard – a journey of more than four miles where I counted more than 70 dead animals half-buried in the bleached desert sand. Some lay under the shade of a tree, their bared teeth grinning grimly from their sunken skulls. Read the rest of this entry »