As an offshoot of our Mali America Music project, Papa Zani and I are going to make a small donation of $700 from our GoFundMe to the rural village of Wancoro Bele Konougu in Mali. The population of the village is roughly 200 people. The head woman of the village, is named Massitan Mariko. She has met with all the women of the village to decide the best way to use this small grant. The woman feel that creating a large garden for the village would be the most beneficial because they could grow crops like corn, onions, mais and feed the village and sell produce at the market, earning some money to help sustain the village. The village is a subsistence farming community and they have no way of earning money to move the village forward. This new garden would make a huge difference to the village. Planting a community garden, includes preparing the soil, building fencing, buying fertilizer and seed, and figuring out the best way to use their shallow dug well for watering the garden. All together the garden would serve the village well, and will some luck and a good crop they could earn money to help purchase items for the village. For the moment, our Mali America Music project has committed to fund the garden. Since we have a lot of expenses ourselves we decided $700 for the village would be what we can afford to donate at this point. Papa Zani will also be checking in on the village to see the progress. We hope that in the future, they can find another grant to put in a new well, which would cost $700. The village only has one shallow well at this point and they pull water out by a plastic bag on a rope. It takes hours to take the water out, which is why the new well would have a pump, either a hand crank or a solar pump. Here are a few photos of the women at their current water source. You can see the labor intensity of pulling the water out in these photos.
If you would like to help with this grant, https://gofund.me/f2349598
