Helping women in Africa put food on the table

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Helping women in Africa put food on the table

http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/...on_the_-1.html

BY CARLOS RODRIGUEZ MARTORELL

Sitting in her comfy apartment near Brooklyn's Prospect Park, Marième Daff reviews pictures from her latest trip to Africa.

"This woman started with a tiny, tiny business, selling rice and peanuts. Two years ago, she could barely feed her family," she says in her calm, silky voice, pointing at Awa Sangaré, a spirited-looking woman from a village in Mali called Tonka.

When Daff, 31, visited her last month, Sangaré was "the best businessperson in the market that day. She had this huge store where she was selling tomatoes, mangoes, peanuts, fish and even art, pottery. ... She even had a cell phone!"

A measly $80 did the charm.

"For Mali, it's a lot. She is now teaching her skills to her daughter and
also to other people in the community," Daff says.

Daff is the program officer for Africa at Trickle Up, a New York-based
international nonprofit organization that gives small grants to some of the poorest people in the world - including the U.S. - particularly to women.

Born in Senegal and raised in France, Daff oversees the allocation of
thousands of grants of an average $100 in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Uganda and Ethiopia.

In those countries, up to 28 coordinating agencies seek grantees and give them basic business advice. "Most of the times, the people who receive the capital are nonliterate," Daff says.

In 2006, 3,475 new businesses were initiated. Daff made three trips to the region for a total of nearly two months of travel.

"In the last 27 years, Trickle Up has helped people start or expand over
150,000 businesses as a way out of poverty, affecting the lives of over half a million people" all over the world, says Susannah Leisher, the group's director of programs.

"She's just stellar," Leisher says of Daff. "She's a very good listener,
unassuming, poised and incredibly organized."

Born in Senegal's capital city of Dakar, Daff is the third of six children.
The family moved to Paris because her father, in what turned out to be a
family tradition, worked for a nongovernmental organization for
French-African cooperation.

Growing up, she spent many summers in her homeland. She enjoyed the beaches
and amenities of Dakar, but "my dad would send us to his village [Kanel],
some eight hours north. At the time, it was a place where there was no
running water, no electricity; we had to go fetch water and food," she says.

"I think he did it so that we could realize what opportunities we had in
France, but. ... We used to hate it!" she adds, laughing. "In etrospective,
it was a good lesson."

So good that she makes it a point of going to Africa often.

"The only way I can live in the north, whether the U.S. or Europe, is if I
can go back in Africa on a regular basis," she says. "I have this feeling
that wherever you're born, you left part or yourself there."

Daff studied comparative literature at the Sorbonne University, but
afterwards she needed a change.

"There is a saying in my family that I was born to go to America," she says, smiling. "Since I was little, I've been always interested and intrigued by it. And I knew that, somehow, I would make it to America."

It's not only that she enjoyed American music - Tracy Chapman is her
favorite singer. She was also lured by the overall New World mind-set.

"In Europe, there's this mentality that some things are impossible," she
says. "In America, is, like, you set up your mind to do one thing, and you just have to work really hard and it can happen."

In 1998, her wishes came true when Daff got a semester fellowship to the University of Rhode Island. The next year, she returned, this time to New York University, where she got a master's degree in journalism and communications. Thrilled with the city, she never looked back.

As a journalist, Daff reported for several French publications about the
West African communities in Harlem and Brooklyn. While researching, she also got to catch up on thieboudienne, Senegal's national dish - and her personal cure for homesickness.

A practicing Muslim, she says she hasn't experienced any antagonism in the fallout of 9/11, probably because she doesn't fit the stereotype.

"When I say that I'm a Muslim, sometimes I hear, 'Oh, you don't look like a Muslim,' and I'm like, 'What does that mean?'"

After a couple of years of freelance writing, she changed course again and went to work for MADRE, a women's human rights organization. In December 2005, she joined Trickle Up, where she currently manages a budget of $1.3 million.

For Daff, helping is what matters most, although she recognizes her work's limitations. "I do believe that business shouldn't be the only way to end poverty. There has to be a change in the macro level," she says.

"But I also know, from seeing it with my own eyes, that when people can't feed their children or can't take them to school, they don't want to wait for the macro changes to happen," she adds. "All they want is to have food on the table at the end of the day."

For more information on Trickle Up, visit http://www.trickleup.org.

Do you know an immigrant New Yorker who achieved his or her dream in our great city?

E-mail Maite Junco at BigTown@nydailynews.com

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Trickle Up
http://www.trickleup.org/entrepreneurs/profile_mali_maiga.html

"Selling in the market leads to being able to feed the kids, which makes it possible for them to go to school. It also means that we can make large investments as a group"
- Talam Maiga, Mali

Talam used to clean the barges that arrived in her town after weeklong journeys on the Niger River, and sometimes sold millet porridge to supplement her income. Although hard-working, she barely made enough to properly care for her six children.
With her Trickle Up grant she opened a food stand in the local market. She sets herself apart from other stands with her table, chair, and a parasol for shade, and she always has cold water on hand - amenities much-appreciated by her customers, as it gets quite hot in town during the day.

She sells shish kebab, mangos, peanuts, and plantains. The mangos she buys wholesale and then resells at a thirty percent markup, but for a penny less than other stands in the market. Depending on the season, she might also sell parsley, cucumbers, onions, and tomatoes.

Talam contributes one dollar per week to her social group and to her business development savings collaborative. Both organizations set aside funds on which members can draw to reinvest in their businesses or to pay for weddings, baptisms, funerals or other events.

"Selling in the market leads to being able to feed the kids, which makes it possible for them to go to school," she says. "It also means that we can make large investments as a group."

She is pleased that she can afford basics like bed sheets and school supplies as well as the cost of celebrations like her son's upcoming wedding. Her goal is to save enough to buy a house for her family - which can cost as much as $2,000 - in a country where the average annual income is less than $1,000.