New Food Security Project map from InterAction

InterAction has a great new tool on their website that helps to show the many food security programs around the world. The Food Security Map is an interactive tool that organizes all of the food and agriculture programs by country, the organization giving the aid, and a description of each project.

For example, you can click on the country Mauritania and see where the food security programs are concentrated at and a brief description of their work. In Mauritania ,World Vision conducts two out of the three programs, one providing support to farmers and another that helps to develop an entire community.

InterAction hopes the map will begin to create more cooperation between their member charities. They also hope that it will give donors more information on how to give to specific projects.

One striking bit of information found from this map is the glut of programs going on in Haiti. The map displays 104 different food security projects in the tiny island nation. The only other nation with that many is Bangladesh. Many say that it is the overwhelming amount of humanitarian aid received that keeps the nation from ever becoming self-sufficient. This map might give more evidence to that point of view.

The Food Security Map can be found at InterAction by hitting this link. Below is a screen-shot of the map.

Terre Vivante; a microcredit operation in Mauritania

The Voice of America has a profile of a microcredit organization in Mauritania that is turning women into businesswomen. The non-profit Terre Vivante is a co-operative that gives little loans to women in the area. The women are often selling goods at markets and the little loans help them to improve their shops.

From the Voice of America, writer Anne Look examines one success story from the co-op.

In Mauritania, women often bear the brunt of the country's crushing poverty, but a local nonprofit organization is trying to change that by turning wives and mothers into entrepreneurs.

Ticket to success?

Emetoulahi Mint Ahmedou Saleme used to spend most days at home with her four children, while her husband bartered and sold what he could to scrape by. Saleme and her husband could not afford to send the children to school. They could not always afford to feed them.

Now, Saleme earns up to $15 a day selling cold drinks at a market near her home in the El Mina slum on the outskirts of Nouakchott. The secret to her success? A small, white refrigerator given to her by a local women's co-operative, Terre Vivante.

Saleme says this has been successful project for her. It has definitely improved her daily life and living conditions. She says her income is not only larger but also more regular, which enables her to send her children to school. She can buy them food, clothing, school supplies and medicines. She says it has been a great project for the family.

Smiling, Saleme opens the fridge. Small plastic baggies filled with water and homemade bissap juice are piled in the freezer. Neat rows of soda bottles line the inside of the refrigerator door.

Realizing that cold drinks would sell much better in the scorching desert heat, Saleme says she approached Terre Vivante with her business plan last year. Now, she is the one giving her husband money to support his trading business.

Non-profit invests in women

Founded in 1993, Terre Vivante invests in women via non-formal education classes and micro-finance projects, like Saleme's, in the hopes of finding a long-term path to success for impoverished families.

The non-profit's director, Moulaye Ahmed Ould Abdel Jelil, says the group focuses on women because they are often the most impacted by poverty.

Jelil says if a woman's husband works, he often keeps the money for himself. He says it is the wife who takes care of the family. She does the shopping, prepares the meals and takes care of the children's clothing, education and health care. He says the husband works, but often what he brings home is not enough. It is the woman's responsibility to economize and get by on whatever he gives to the family. He says that is just the reality of Mauritanian society, and women suffer as a result.

He says female entrepreneurs, like Saleme, are a relatively new phenomenon in Mauritania, as women struggle to make ends meet for their families.

Educational programs lead to better life

Mauritania is one of the poorest countries in the world. On average, people there live on about two dollars a day. Terre Vivante has found that families in the Nouakchott's slums eat just two meals a day, and what food they do eat is low in nutritional value. As the cost of living rises, Jelil has seen fathers abandoning the families they can no longer support.

In Mauritania, educating girls is often a low-priority, especially in poor families, and most women do not receive more than a primary school education, if that. To fill in the gaps, Terre Vivante's educational programs cover a range of topics from basic literacy and computer skills to nutrition and HIV/AIDS prevention.

The group has also organized cooperatives to help rural women develop business plans and purchase goats, sheep and cattle using micro-credit loans. Jelil says they are in the process of developing a similar micro-credit program for women in Nouakchott's slums.

Jelil says empowering women is essential in the predominantly Muslim country where women are often subjugated to men.

He says the more financially independent a woman is, the more of a voice she has and the less dependent she is on others. He says that allows her to express herself and her values with dignity. He says that is what his organization is working towards: women who can be strong and proud of what they have done.

Giving back

Since partnering with Terre Vivante, Saleme has become a literacy teacher for other women in the cooperative and her fridge has become a source of inspiration for the women in her neighborhood.

Saleme says the project has been great for the women, who ask her where she got the fridge because they would like to do something similar. She says others would like to be trained on sewing machines, fabric painting and even on computers so they can do their own accounting. Her friends already have a business painting veils and would like training on how to expand their business.

A textile business. A public drinking fountain for the neighborhood. A fridge. The women in El Mina have big ideas, Saleme says, they just need a little help to get started.

Poverty and tradition shackle Mauritania's slaves

from Middle East Online

Slaves in Mauritania show optimism in country’s transition to liberate them, end poverty.

By Daniel Flynn - NOUAKCHOTT

Born a slave, like his entire family, Matalla Mbreik toiled from dawn to dusk selling water and tending his master's flocks on the lonely fringes of the Saharan desert, until he could take no more.

"I still have the scars from my beatings, like my mother and sisters," said the 32-year-old Mauritanian, staring at the floor, dressed in flowing pale-blue embroidered robes. "All they gave us to eat were leftovers."

After years spent dreaming of escape, Mbreik seized his chance two months ago when a Mauritanian army truck passed him searching for an oasis in the desert.

"I told them to shoot me rather than take me back to my master," said Mbreik, red-faced with shame, sitting in the office of anti-slavery group SOS-Slave.

Although banned by law in 1980, slavery in Mauritania has persisted, perpetuated by poverty and rigid customs. Authorities long denied its existence but campaigners estimate there are still hundreds of thousands of slaves among the 3 million population -- the highest ratio in the world.

Chattel slavery, where one person is the property of another, has existed in the impoverished West African country for more than 800 years.

Traditionally, members of the haratin slave caste must marry who their masters’ say and can be given as gifts, bought and sold, or presented to the poor as charity.

Children are often separated from their mothers and sent to work in other homes. Girls frequently suffer sexual abuse.

"Westerners think of slaves as people in chains," said Boubacar Messaoud, head of SOS-Slave. "Slaves here have no need to be chained up because they are educated in submission ... They are chained in their heads."

"If my master had been kind, I would not have left him," said Mbreik, tightly gripping the edge of the sofa.

MILLIONS OF SLAVES

The International Day for the Abolition of Slavery on December 2 marks the landmark 1949 U.N. convention against people trafficking. Anti-slavery campaigners estimate there are still more than 25 million slaves worldwide.

Slavery remains rife in many parts of West Africa's arid Sahel region, such as neighbouring Mali or Niger, ranked among the poorest countries in the world.

"We are a country of castes, like all the other countries in this region," said Colonel Ely Ould Mohamed Vall, the head of Mauritania's military junta which seized power last year, vowing a transition to democracy after decades of dictatorship.

"But Mauritania, more than other countries, is addressing this problem of castes and their consequences on post-independence society," he said, pointing to the adoption of international conventions and efforts to educate former slaves.

SOS-Slave's Messaoud says the situation has improved since the junta ousted former president Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya in a bloodless coup. He hopes the transition to presidential elections in March will bring freedom for all Mauritanians.

"We are optimistic because Mauritania's rulers now acknowledge that slavery exists," said Messaoud, who was jailed several times under Taya's regime. "If the elections are transparent that will be a real victory."

With many escaped slaves unwilling or too ashamed to prosecute their former masters, SOS-Slave is campaigning for the right to bring third party prosecutions against slave-owners.

"Mauritania has never convicted anyone for practising slavery. That would mark the start of recognition that slavery is no longer acceptable," he said. "The laws forbid slavery, but they are new and traditions are very old."

POVERTY BREEDS SLAVERY

Former slave owner Mohamed Salem Ould Hamada's family willingly freed all their slaves in 1991. He now condemns slavery as unjust but understands how the ancient practice came to exist.

"In our religion slavery is a bad thing," said Hamada, citing the Koranic story of Yusuf sold into slavery in Egypt. "It exists because there are problems which are worse: poverty."

"In many cases, it is the slaves themselves who want the procedure," said Hamada. "While problems of poverty continue to exist, slavery will continue."

In a poor shanty-town near Nouakchott's airport, where corrugated iron shacks dot the sand dunes and goats nibble at piles of rubbish, SOS-Slave has helped Aichana start a new life.

Children in torn rags play beside the "street", marked by car tyres planted in the sand, outside the small shop which she established with money from the group.

"Before when I worked, it was never for me -- even if I earned money I had to give it to my master," Aichana said, sat inside on a red mat beside shelves stacked with couscous, soap, dry biscuits, pasta, and condensed milk.

"When I was young, I thought life was like that, but as I grew older and saw how other people lived, I felt ashamed," she added, as flies settled on her face in the morning haze.

"Now, all I want is to be able to earn my living honestly ... for my children to go to school, for them to be honest and grow up like normal people."

Mauritania gets E4 million Italian poverty grant

from The Angola Press

Nouakchott, Mauritania, Italy will grant Mauritania 4 million euros to help fund of a poverty reduction project under an agreement signed here by the two governments, an official source said here Thursday.

Mauritania`s Interior Minister Mohamed Ahmed Ould Mohamed Lemine, and Italian Ambassador to Mauritania, Augustino Mathts, Wednesday afternoon signed the agreement for the funding.

Execution of the project over the next three years will help improve the level of food security and reduce under-nutrition in two regions located in the north of the country (Inchiri and Adrar).

It will also help to carry out many actions to open up some areas, improve nutrition and develop income-generating activities.