Eliminate Poverty Now

EPN to Receive 2nd Grant from Henry Ford Community College

2013-05-20T17:09:00.000-04:00

We are so pleased to announce that Professor Jared Boyd's economics class at Henry Ford Community College will be funding Eliminate Poverty Now's work in Niger with another $2,000 grant!

This is the second grant we are receiving from Professor Boyd's students. (Read about the first grant here!) The class has decided to split the gift between two projects. $1000 will be used to purchase all the root stock at one of the three school nurseries in Farmers of the Future, and $1000 will go to Elevage so that 5 more women will be able to participate in that program.

Please join us in thanking Professor Boyd and his students for their repeated generosity and support!

EPN Featured by New Jersey Hills Newspapers

2013-05-06T11:58:00.000-04:00

Eliminate Poverty Now is thrilled to have received extensive publicity by the New Jersey Hills Media Group - first as a FRONT PAGE article in the Mendham, NJ Observer-Tribune, and more recently in ALL the local newspapers that this chain publishes! Our tremendous thanks to Liz Parker, a fellow Rotarian.

We are so grateful for the support, and are pleased to share the article here.

We should note a couple of typos. Judy is quoted as saying that "you can change someone's life for $2,000." The truth is, any donation will do good, but Judy meant that even $200 can change a person's life!

Also, John is quoted as saying that EPN would like to expand the Farmers of the Future project to "hundreds of thousands" of schools rather than "hundreds or thousands" of schools. We don't want to promise too much!

We are so happy to have this support in what is turning out to be a wonderful year, and we hope that you will take a few minutes to check the article out!

Very Exciting News: Carbondale Rotary Club Grants $10,000 to Create Women’s Tree Nursery!

2013-03-19T18:05:00.000-04:00

We are so excited to share the news with all of you that the Carbondale Rotary Club has granted Eliminate Poverty Now $10,000 to create a women's tree nursery in Galbal, Niger! The Carbondale club has been amazingly supportive of EPN's work, and we are so grateful; you may remember that over the summer, they gave us a $1,000 grant for the RockPads project that supplied 40 girls with sanitary pads.

This latest grant allows us to complete the Farmers of the Future site at Galbal, combining the income-generating project for mothers with the children's programs already in place. The women in the village of Galbal will graft fruit trees for sale in the local market, which is a very profitable business. The revenues from the business will generate about $500 per mother, a substantial increase in income for people who live on less than $1/day. The revenues will also cover all operating expenses for the tree nursery, and pay school fees for all 600 children in the village.

The above photos are from a tree-grafting training session in Niger

We don’t often tally up how many lives are changed by our work. To change even one life is to change the entire world, right? But from now on, we’re going to quantify how many lives will be changed. So here are some numbers for your consideration. As a result of this generous grant:

one sustainable business will be created;
20 women will be lifted out of extreme poverty and be able to feed and clothe their families;
and primary school will become free for all 600 children in the village.

Think of the change this will make in the lives of everyone in Galbal. The ripple effect is mind-boggling – thousands of lives will be improved! When we look at numbers like this, we cannot help but be humbled by the difference we can make with the help of others.

THANK YOU ROTARY!

And as always, we are looking ahead. John and Judy are working on an even larger grant from Rotary. By combining contributions from Rotary Clubs in Colorado, New Jersey and Canada, and adding matching funds from Rotary International, we hope to fund a tree nursery for mothers at Gonzare (our third pilot school in the Farmers of the Future program) and a vegetable garden for mothers of students at Ecole Centre, which will likely become our fourth pilot site. The project will create two more sustainable businesses, generate much needed income for another 40 women, and provide free education for over 1,000 additional students. We'll have more news on this exciting new grant this summer, so stay tuned.