26 August 2005

Description of various famine relief ministries by SIM Niger

Leprosarium at Danja

The project is intended to provide immediate food assistance to 5,000 people in the 32 villages that surround the hospital through purchase of food items for the people and provisions of drug and protein supplements for malnourished children.

The intended beneficiaries include people affected by leprosy in these villages and other disabled persons, old people, orphans, breastfeeding women, malnourished children, people living below level of poverty, and people that are identified by local authority as being directly affected by the famine.

The 32 communities surrounding the leprosy centre have been part of the worst hit area of the famine. There has been an influx of people, mostly old, coming into the hospital seeking for food. The hospital has also received an increased number of children that are malnourished, some of whom eventually died because of limited assistance.

The provision for grain budgeted this year for the above has been exhausted. An additional $33,000 US is being raised in partnership with TLM [The Leprosy Mission] for the centre's Benevolent Fund to help with the increased numbers of destitute coming for care.

The Dagon Gao Bible School in the Danja area also participated in famine relief.

In the Madaoua, Konni, Malbaza, and Tahoua

Relief was provided to families that are most in need, especially among the evangelists, church members and to other people in the villages most severely affected in our region. The project is expected to benefit about 250+ families in the villages surrounding the hospital region.

Centre d'Education et Rehabilitation Nutritionelle (CREN)

The CREN has become a major famine relief intervention center by caring for mothers and their children who had nothing left at home to eat. This is one of the major activities for this year. This centre which is meant to care for a maximum of 30 children has as of August '05 about 54 children (108 people in all, mother and child). This number has been increasing by an average of 12 (mother and child) per week, and the mothers are now asking to be allowed into the CREN because they have nothing to eat at home or to give to their children. The CREN is presently being expanded to accommodate a near refugee situation that we are facing right now. Moreover, with the fallout of the present famine, we have decided to take a long-term proactive response by writing a five-year project. It was, therefore, for reasons of effective and adequate nutritional care, which addresses not only the immediate nutritional problem, but long-term understanding of adequate children's nutritional needs by their mother, that this centre and the project that supports it was established.

Tera Famine Relief

This project is a response to a hunger crisis brought on by inadequate rainfall and a locust plague in 2004. It envisages helping some believers and friends in Tera and the nearby village of Doumba get through a very difficult year, perhaps the most difficult since the great famine of 1984. We will buy three types of grain (400 sacks) at the cheapest price available and store grain in a rented house. The grain will be sold at very low prices to a set list of people during the rainy season months. A committee of three from the International Church of Tera will be in charge of buying and selling the grain. As of 24 August they are in the process of distributing millet, rice, and maize to 17 families in Tera and 15 families in nearby Doumba every 3 weeks and plan to do so until the end of October.

Goure

We had a very successful intervention here in Goure, a neighbor- to-neighbor sharing operation through the church members. It went well. 1200 people were helped in an orderly way much appreciated by the people in Goure, especially those who received some grain. The church members picked up the grain and took it to their households within 24 hours and immediately began to give it out to people who they have known to be in need for weeks to months. We gave a bag to each church family but most of this grain, I have heard, was also given away. The grain was all gone within a few days; in some cases within a day.

Tchin-Tabaraden

Members of the Niamey Tamajaq church have gone to help replenish the short-stock (goats and sheep) that were lost this month due to flash flooding in this area. Food was distributed in the last few days through the Tamajaq church in Niamey to people who they know are in great need. (This was Samaritan Purse funds.)

Zinder

Aid was given in conjunction with local churches. Cash was allocated for a food-for-work program for all the unemployed in the city, which involves cleaning up public streets in Zinder.

Aguie and Maradi

About $11,000 US was given to Aguie Bible School for food aid. Roger and Marjorie Upson (from SIM Nigeria) and a Nigerian colleague from Jos, Nigeria, are coordinating the food distribution in the area. They have brought aid collected from ECWA churches in Nigeria. An additional 10,000,000 cfa [about $20,000 USD] was sent from Niamey SIM office to the Maradi office to be used for intervention by the Upsons and Evans during the week of August 22.