Every year, it kills more children, women, and men than hurricanes and earthquakes! Yet extreme poverty is too often ignored. More than 1.2 billion children, women, and men—or approximately 18 percent of the world's population—live on less than $1.50 a day.
This extreme poverty keeps people hungry all day and all night. It deprives them of housing, medical care, the ability to work, and the chance to receive an education. Children suffer the most. Poverty creates an environment that is damaging to a child's physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual development. And it shortens life expectancy. The deaths it causes are tragic and preventable.
ADRA's projects target the root causes of poverty for millions of people and bring change to communities through the areas of immediate food supplements and training in gardening skills, clean water and adequate sanitation, and microloans and business skills training. These are just a few of the ways that ADRA is fighting poverty.
In Niger, the world's poorest country, ADRA is creating sustainable ways for women to feed their families and earn an income. In Tibiri, hours east of the capital of Niamey and three miles from the northern border of Nigeria, cross-generational households average 10 to 12 individuals. Due to extreme poverty, the majority of men work as migrant laborers in Nigeria. Food is extremely scarce six months of the year.
Millet is the traditional food source, and family resources usually depend on the success of this crop. In many places, peanuts grow wild. In an area often at-risk of famine, the growing and eating of vegetables is rare.
"I'd heard of people eating vegetables," says Lahiya, "but I could never dream of affording them. Before ADRA came to our village, I had only heard of people eating potatoes in the city."
Starting with 15 women, ADRA created an organic vegetable production program three years ago to address the food and nutritional needs of families. As the success of the project spread throughout the communities, 60 villages asked to be included in the program.
Agriculture training begins with ADRA workers providing continual on-site assistance. Today, the project is in such high demand that a weekly ADRA agricultural radio program has been developed. Growing potatoes, cabbages, onions, carrots, tomatoes, and eggplants, the women work long hours producing food for their families.
"Growing vegetables has allowed us to eat better and have income. Our husbands thought they should grow the vegetables when the project was introduced, but they soon gave up because it was so much work," Lahiya says while laughing. "Potatoes are our favorite vegetable because all the children beg to eat them. Last year, I harvested 16 pounds of potatoes to sell at the market and sold them for $1.50 a pound. This was a huge blessing! If we had not had this income, we would not have been able to buy the medicine that saved my youngest son's life," Lahiya shares. "I hate to think of what might have happened."
