Ami Diarra, a Trickle Up participant from Mali, shows us her business, buying and selling beans in the market. She also uses the beans to feed her family.

The West African country of Mali, the site of Trickle Up’s largest program, is one of those places that rarely makes news.  Unfortunately, though, Mali is now in the news because of unrest that apparently is linked to the downfall of Muammar el-Qaddafi.  Thousands of Malian men who had gone to Libya to fight for Qaddafi have no returned home to join with members of the Tuareg tribe in the northern desert of Mali.  The Tuaregs, who historically have resisted government control, have been engaged in several recent battles with Mali’s army.

Mali can ill afford civil strife.  Already one of the poorest nations on the planet, its tourism industry has been decimated by a number of kidnappings of foreigners, allegedly by an Al Qaeda group active in the region.  Mali also faces a looming food crisis, as droughts and poor harvests take their toll.  Several global aid agencies have recently sounded an alarm about potential crisis-level hunger in the region.

Here are two links to articles about recent unrest in Mali and a link to an excellent report about food situation in the Sahel region, which includes Mali.

From the Guardian: Mali contends with new Tuareg rebellion as food crisis looms (2.7.2012)

From the New York Times: Qaddafi’s Weapons, Taken by Old Allies, Reinvigorate an Insurgent Army in Mali (2.5.2012)

 From Action Against Hunger: The Sahel Food Crisis, A Race Against Time

What many people don’t know is that Africa has had savings groups long before international development agencies introduced them as a “community-driven poverty alleviation tool,” as we say in development-speak.  Known as tontines, these groups are either all-male or all-female, and the members contribute a set amount to a common “pot,” which is distributed monthly to a different member in order to take care of some large expense, such as a special ceremony or for medical care. Being in such a group can be considered a step up in one’s social standing in one’s community. However, you need to have financial means to contribute regularly to a tontine, which for the extreme poor is simply not possible. Their incomes are too irregular and savings for them are almost nonexistent. So, when our participants join the program and start their savings groups, some already begin to see signs of change; they feel pride because they can finally join a tontine of their very own. A big deal.

But it doesn’t stop there. Participants build solidarity amongst each another. For example, it isn’t uncommon to hear women in these groups taking collective action to help one of their own in times of need. For example, Marieme told me that women in a savings groups on the outskirts of the town of Mopti decided to go to the house of one of their members to dissuade the husband from taking a second wife. Feeling the pressure from the group, he caved and did not marry. While in the village of Barbé’s savings group, one woman has made herself responsible for encouraging other members to send their children to school. She goes house to house to ensure no kids are home during school-time; if the mothers don’t have a compelling reason for keeping their children at home, she reports them to the principal.  The video above showcases some of these interviews.

So, how  does the Trickle Up fabric come in to play? When they can finally afford it, the women in the savings groups actually pool their money to get matching outfits. Called “boubous” in Mali, the women go all-out to find the right fabric. They especially like having fabrics that are branded or have a famous person or cause (like International Women’s Day) on them. Which is why a few years ago a group of women  commissioned Trickle Up to develop its own fabric so that savings groups can use it to make their matching boubous. Even Trickle Up’s President, Bill Abrams wears it on occasion, such as this shot from our annual holiday party. Recently, the trend has been President Barack Obama’s face on the boubous.

They also give inspirational names to their groups, adding to the aura of solidarity and pride these women share for their group:

• Amakené : Que Dieu nous aide à avancer dans nos entreprises / God help us move forward with our businesses
• Namoudiguè : Chassons la pauvreté / Let’s chase poverty away
• Guiressagou : Le bonheur / Happiness
• Monobèmou : Soyons ensemble / Let’s be together
• Kamonon : Parlons le même langage / Let’s speak the same language
• Moroyama : Allons ensemble / Let’s go together
• Ogopèma : Longue vie à notre pouvoir / Long live our power

A tailor near Trickle Up's field office in Mopti, Mali, making the Trickle Up fabric.

All this to say that savings groups are, in a sense, the sustainability factor in continuing these womens’ journeys out of extreme poverty. Savings groups have an ability to instill pride and a sense of empowerment, whether it be through greater social standing, access to financial assets needed to grow their businesses, or just the opportunity to build relationships with each other.  The women stick around even after Trickle Up and its partner agencies end the program. In fact, Marieme revisited some of these groups last year, a year and a half after the program officially ended and found that all of the savings groups were still functioning. Not just that, the women brought in new members to their group to grow their pool of money. Now other members of the community, some whom would have never even talked to these women before the program, are borrowers from the savings groups. Microcredit institutions are beginning to lend money to some of these groups for even greater investment in their members’ businesses. Overall, these are very positive signs for the future of these women, their families and their communities.

In the same drawer I also found a tie made out of the Trickle Up fabric. I think I’ll start wearing it. Not only does it make my job easier to walk around New York with a walking billboard around my neck, more importantly it will show that even though I’m 6000 miles away, I am in solidarity with the amazing work our participants are doing in their savings groups.

Through your continued support of Trickle Up, communities in some of the poorest parts of the world can now look forward to brighter futures.

Happy Holidays.

With gratitude and friendship,
All of us at Trickle Up

In his blog post today on “Food Gifts That Matter,” New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman listed Trickle Up first in his list of recommended charities. Mark is an extraordinary chef and humanitarian, always seeking new ways to advocate for the poor and hungry. We are proud to be named among his top charities in his “Food Gifts That Matter.”

If you’re interested in finding out more about Trickle Up’s work in alleviating global hunger, here are some great resources:

Savings groups are circles of women who work together to create their own group bank; they build savings, manage their accounts, and give loans to members both to grow their businesses and to use in times of hardship. But these circles represent so much more than just a savings box—they are a source of information, new ideas and a support system for women.

In one savings group in India, one of its members, Rudhe Khersil, was three months pregnant when the group was formed. She saved together with the other women but, as her due date drew closer, she could no longer attend the meetings.

But although Rudhe wasn’t present, the other women learned from a health worker about the value of giving birth in a health clinic rather than in their homes, something practiced by nearly all families in that community. They learned that staff at the health clinics would ensure that the mother has a safe delivery and that mother and child receive medical care if there were any problems. All of these services were free. They even learned about a government program that would give a cash payment to any woman who gave birth in a health clinic.

The women in Rudhe’s savings group thought about her and decided they’d help ensure that she could give birth safely in a health center instead of in her home. So, the savings group decided to set 1,000 rupees (approximately $18 USD) aside in the savings box and not touch it until it was time for Rudhe to give birth. While the health clinic treatment was free, she would need funds for transportation. The group’s funds were tight and some members had to do without loans so they could protect Rudhe’s money.

One night, Rudhe began feeling labor pains so some of the women took the money, rented a vehicle, and took her to the nearest hospital. Happily, she gave birth to a healthy, beautiful baby. She also received the money from the government for having her baby in the hospital, which she returned to her savings group members.

To the women we work with, savings groups are more important than just accessing savings and credit. They enable women to come together to support one another in times of need. Rudhe’s savings group, Mother Durga Women’s Group, is named in honor of the Goddess Durga who is said to help in situations of distress. For Rudhe, her group helped in times of joy too.

Interested in how a savings group meeting runs in India? Click here.

This Thanksgiving, I want to thank our supporters for their generosity in helping nearly 40,000 people out of extreme poverty this year.

Among these is Laxmi Bauri, a mother of two from India who used Trickle Up’s support to grow cauliflower, eggplant, and tomato. She sells the produce and reinvests the profits in expanding her business, using some to build a new house for her family. Now she has laid a path to lead herself and her family out of poverty.

I wish you and yours a happy and healthy Thanksgiving holiday.

Sincerely,

Bill Abrams
President
Trickle Up

Every time I travel to Mali in the fall, I am amazed at how lush everything looks. The contrast between the dry and rainy season is quite dramatic. Between November and May—the long “dry season”—the soil is arid, barren and almost uniformly brown. The rains usually arrive in June and last until the end of September, marking the beginning of the harvest.

Last October, when I visited some of the rural villages where Trickle Up works in northern Mali, participants and their families, many of whom are small-scale farmers, were preparing for the annual harvest.

Tall millet and sorghum grain plants tell the story of a successful and happy time for these women and their families. What they don’t tell is the story of the rest of the year. During my last visit I met with Niamoye Maiga, a Trickle Up participant, in the small town of Djenné. She told me, “The harvest generally lasts us only eight months of the year.” If you do the math, that still leaves four months before the next harvest, a period that Malians and others around the world refer to as the “hungry season”, when families must go with an inadequate supply of food. This means lots of skipped meals, resulting in increased rates of malnourished children.

“This year’s harvest will be bad. We didn’t have enough rain and I don’t think our food supply will last more than six months.” This means a long six months of hunger lies ahead for Niamoye, her three children and husband.

What one almost never expects is the dance that Malian mothers do to support their families during this time.

No, they don’t actually dance, but the intricate steps required by the women to keep their families fed and their businesses growing, always inspires me to call it just that, a dance. Niamoye juggles several activities at the same time, including sheep rearing, vegetable gardening, and petty trading to supplement rice farming, the household’s main livelihood. “My sheep rearing business not only played a major role in increasing and improving the quality of food for my family,” Niamoye explained, “but with the profits generated from selling sheep, I was also able to directly invest in our rice farm, purchasing grains, fertilizers and other equipment to expand production.”

The dance becomes more complex when women build solidarity by syncing their efforts to overcome the hungry season together. Savings groups are one such way Trickle Up facilitates women coming together, enabling them to use credit to buy extra rice to fill gaps in their family’s food supply. It also helps them collectively invest their savings in a granary, to store food during the plentiful months in anticipation of next year’s hungry season.

More often than not, the dance is done with a woman’s husband, who traditionally is the head of the household. For one, while it is generally the husband’s responsibility to provide grain, women in the Trickle Up program most directly improve the quality and nutritional value of food by providing vegetables and protein for family meals.The downside is that traditional gender inequalities are exacerbated during these months. In Bengasi, a participant explained that traditionally men and boys eat first and then the women and girls eat whatever is left. Though this participant plays a major role in supporting her family through her trading activities, she did not feel that she could change this custom. This is especially dangerous to the household’s long-term well-being, as children – especially girls – who if aren’t fed properly in the first 1,000 days of childhood will never be able to catch up. Instead, families will face increased costs due to complications from malnutrition, and girls will grow up more economically and socially disadvantaged.

While this is a far cry from the full-scale famine in the Horn of Africa to the east, the hungry season is a fixture for much of the Sahel. The Sahel is in north-central Africa, south of the Sahara desert, extending from Senegal and Mauritania in the west, to the borders of Sudan in the east. While Mali almost never makes the news, it is often referred to as the “silent tsunami” of Africa’s food crisis. The poor can always expect the hungry season to be waiting for them when their stores of millet, rice and corn run out.

The Trickle Up program focuses on empowering women because we know that women offer one of the most promising solutions to overcoming this deadly trend. Regardless of how many hungry seasons families must endure, mothers will always perform that delicate dance to ensure their families are fed throughout the year.

By Marième Daff, Africa Program Director

Learn more about Trickle Up & Food Security >

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Learn more at:

trickleup.org/foodforthought

Podcast:

Panelists:

• Marieme Daff, Africa Program Director, Trickle Up
• Dr. Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food
• Dan Glickman, Former US Secretary of Agriculture
• Bettina Leuscher, Chief Spokesperson, North America, World Food Programme
• Roger Thurow, Senior Fellow for Global Agriculture & Food Policy, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs

Ideas to End World Hunger (click on each to learn more):

1. Acknowledge the existence and severity of the food crisis in both the west and the east of Africa
2. Increase agricultural research & development, especially for appropriate technologies based on the local need
3. Strengthen institutions to adopt the right to food
4. We have the way, we need the political will
5. Invest in creative new tools for fighting hunger, particularly focusing on early childhood nutrition
6. Empower women
7. Create local, rural empowerment
8. Tackle speculation by financial actors
9. Reduce biofuel subsidies
10. Implement pro-poor aid policies in the United States
11. Involve the private sector in innovative public-private partnerships
12. Establish social safety nets through a global reinsurance mechanism

Pictures from the Event:

Trickle Up hosted a panel discussion on September 26th, 2011 titled, “Can Financial Services Help the Poorest of the Poor?” With our colleagues at the Microfinance Club of New York, Bill Abrams, President of Trickle Up, Anne Hastings, CEO of Fonkoze Financial Services, and Irena Shiba, Program Officer at the Citi Foundation, as the moderator, we discussed efforts to identify appropriate financial services that can reach the extreme poor, the 1 billion people around the world living on less than $1.25 a day.

The Graduation Program, a collaboration of over 40 organizations led by the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) and the Ford Foundation is a global effort to understand how safety nets, livelihoods, and microfinance can be sequenced to create pathways for the poorest to graduate out of extreme poverty. The model, adapted from methodology from BRAC (Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee), was tested in 10 pilot programs in multiple countries and contexts. Trickle Up’s pilot in West Bengal, India and Fonkoze’s pilot in Haiti, were two such examples presented at the event.

Podcast from the event:

More resources:

• ‘And Who Listens to the Poor?’ Shocks, Stresses and Safety Nets in India and Pakistan Karishma Huda, Sandeep Kaur, Nicolina Lamhauge
• Reaching the Poorest: Lessons from the Graduation Model CGAP Focus Note No. 69
• Graduating out of Extreme Poverty, Who Succeeds? Karishma Huda, Sandeep Kaur, Nicolina Lamhauge; BRAC Development Institute’s Research Brief (Issue 5 August 2011)