Mercy Corps - Africa: Sargane, Niger.

Hadiara, 35, feeds her goats. She and her family live in a small, rural village 90 minutes outside Niamey where families rely heavily on agriculture and nearly everyone lives hand-to-mouth. Food shortages are chronic here, even more so in recent years as the rains have become increasingly less reliable. Like the other women in her community, Hadiara’s days are made of manual labor: cleaning, collecting water and firewood, farming and pounding millet, with the completion of one meal time bleeding into the preparation for the next. “A woman’s life conditions are a question of a lot of struggling to have food and improve our life,” she says. “We work very hard with poor results, and our life is very difficult.”Between 2014 and 2016, Mercy Corps’ ECOUT program was implemented here, providing Hadiara’s family with seeds; cash-for-work to restore farmland; goats; and training on agriculture, nutrition and hygiene. While conditions remain harsh and hunger is still a daily struggle, the family is still seeing some of the benefits from that program: the goat allowed Hadiara to feed her newborn baby when she couldn’t produce breastmilk, and today the animals are healthy — and pregnant, which will provide her with an emergency source of income. “I am taking care of them myself,” Hadiara says of her goats. “They are very precious to me.”
Sargane, Niger. , October 2018

Hadiara, 35, feeds her goats. She and her family live in a small, rural village 90 minutes outside Niamey where families rely heavily on agriculture and nearly everyone lives hand-to-mouth. Food shortages are chronic here, even more so in recent years as the rains have become increasingly less reliable. Like the other women in her community, Hadiara’s days are made of manual labor: cleaning, collecting water and firewood, farming and pounding millet, with the completion of one meal time bleeding into the preparation for the next. “A woman’s life conditions are a question of a lot of struggling to have food and improve our life,” she says. “We work very hard with poor results, and our life is very difficult.” 

Between 2014 and 2016, Mercy Corps’ ECOUT program was implemented here, providing Hadiara’s family with seeds; cash-for-work to restore farmland; goats; and training on agriculture, nutrition and hygiene. While conditions remain harsh and hunger is still a daily struggle, the family is still seeing some of the benefits from that program: the goat allowed Hadiara to feed her newborn baby when she couldn’t produce breastmilk, and today the animals are healthy — and pregnant, which will provide her with an emergency source of income. “I am taking care of them myself,” Hadiara says of her goats. “They are very precious to me.”