Freedom From Hunger Senegal, Day 2:

Day two: I’m with a small delegation from Freedom from Hunger here in Senegal to document Freedom From Hunger/USOFORAL’s programs. Our group includes Brent Farrar, Communications Manager (Davis California) see photo below.

and Mamadou Diallo, (aptly named “Denzel Washington” for his striking resemblance to the actor),  Freedom From Hunger’s Regional Director of West Africa. See photo of Mamadou, below, during a consultation with a Saving for Change member.

Today’s we visited with individual clients of Freedom From Hunger’s Saving for Change program in five different villages within about an hour’s drive from Ziguinchor.

In the above images you see Albertine, a very industrious woman, makes bread at night so that during the day she can continue her other activities which include collecting sand to process into salt, processes palm seeds to produce palm oil, collecting cola tree “bitter” to make health ointments, processing rice plants to collect rice grains, harvesting cashew nuts and making brooms from locally available native grasses. Many of these new business ventures are made possible by her association with her local savings group.

Below is some raw, un-edited, Nikon D3S video.

Next we visited Gilberia (images above), a bread baker, who has devised her own special “oven” which she build with supplies purchased by borrowing money from her local savings group. Gilberia says that things started slowly, but now, the demand for her bread is so high that she can’t keep up. She plans is to borrow additional funds to build a larger oven, expand her business and bring in increased profits. As a result of her participation in Saving for Change,, she has bread for her children’s breakfast, can purchase soap, fish and other household products.

Above, photos are of Medina, she sells tea, sugar, cigarettes and other local spices. She also smokes fish, roasts peanuts, works as a birthing assistant at the local health clinic, sells prescriptions, juice products and makes bread. Before Saving for Change, Medina only sold candy to school children as a way to supplement the meager family income. Now, she’s doing so well that she encourages other’s to join savings groups. She say’s she’s so proud to be able to send her kids to school.

Above images are of Regina. Regina’s first loan was to pay for medical care when she was ill. After recovering her still had leg pains which prevented her from returning to the fields to harvest crops, and with her husband not able to find a job, she needed a way to produce income for the family, so, with a second loan from her Savings Group.Regina built a small store where she sells roasted peanuts and wine. She had great success and got so excited that she says the her next venture will be into the “clothing business”. Regina is really a “go-getter” she recently signed up in a training on the process of how to dye cloth.

By the way, I’m loving my Nikon D3s bodies, the low light capabilities are awesome!