Help Build a Future for IDP Women & Children

For the past 6 years ATEG has been providing assistance to marginalized women and children in Bamako, Mali. Mali is one of the world’s poorest countries and geopolitical events have compounded the suffering. Our focus has been on the internally displaced persons (IDP) driven from their homes in the Mopti Region of Central Mali by jihadi terrorists. A large number of them have been living in the Faladje IDP Camp, which was built on an active garbage dump.

Over the past few years ATEGs has improved the lives of hundreds of women through our Skills Training Program and changed the lives of children, turning them from street beggars into students through our Childhood Education Program. However, the events of September17 have put the future of these programs and these people into jeopardy.

On that day jihadi terrorists attacked the national airport in Bamako and lit the president’s plane on fire, as well as attacking the Police Training Academy. The Malian government determined that some of these terrorists had infiltrated the Faladje IDP Camp and may have been involved in the attack. They therefore decided to close the camp and relocate the IDPs back to Mopti, where they had fled a dozen years ago. This despite the fact that it is still an active terrorist area which is as dangerous as when they left.

At this time the government has not yet set a date for the camp to be closed, but it will be soon. Our Women’s Cooperative is attempting to gauge how many of its members will agree to go to Mopti and how many will stay in Bamako. Some may live with relatives and others with “host families.” If enough choose to stay, ATEG plans to disassemble their Faladje work facility and reassemble it at a site in Bamako. If this is not possible, we will help them rent a place in Bamako to work in. About half of the schoolchildren are continuing their education in the same school, and some have transferred to schools in other sections of Bamako.

Many of the international NGOs who had been working at Faladje, including the Red Cross have suspended their operations. The women have reached out to ATEG and asked that we not abandon them. These women have endured unspeakable hardships. ATEG programs have given them, and their children hope for their future. We need your help to keep these dreams alive.

Although ATEGs programs at the Faladje Camp may be forced to close, we intend to keep providing skills training to IDP women remaining in Bamako and education to Bamako’s street children. We are also continuing to operate the ATEG/Rotary Children’s Clinic which offers free medical care. This is offered not only at the clinic but also off-site at IDP Camps, orphanages and schools. Your support has enabled us to provide these women and children with achance for a better life.

Arts to End Genocide has been working with the Faladji Camp in Bamako, Mali, since 2020..   The people in this camp  fled from North and Central Mali due to the conflicts in the areas  where they lived..   When they fled south no one would take them so they ended up  living literally on a garbage dump in Bamako next to stockyards of cattle and goats.  

Arts to End Genocide in partnership with ADICOM, a local based NGO in Mali, has had several programs for these, our brothers and sisters,   As you can see on our website, www.artstoendgenocide.org we first helped build a medical facility with the help of Rotary International and Rotary New Bern, NC to treat the 6000 + street children.   Arts to End Genocide (ATEG) has been providing doctors and medicine ever since.   Other programs that have been started are to help with food insecurity by providing a month’s ration of rice per family. We started a sewing program to train  some of the women who now train other women to sew.   Some of their products are shown at Tryon Palace in the gift shop in New Bern, NC.   A building was constructed to store the sewing machines.   A Women’s Cooperative was established so the women themselves could decide how to spend the money generated with their proceeds. We started a Sponsor a Child program to help raise funds for all our programs.   The funds generated go to the whole community and not to the child alone.  We were excited to start the first school program for children 5-8 years old last Fall to attend first grade.   Our project provided clothes and book bags (made by the women that had learned to sew), two pairs of shoes, school supplies, the subscription fees and birth certificates for this first group of  children to attend school.  ATEG also paid for a supervisor to check on the children, to see that they were attending and how they were doing.   In conclusion, we found that the girls were more regularly attending, they also made more progress in the program.  For this coming year we will address some of these issues to help the boys better succeed and we hope to start more children in school this Fall.  

Our newest programs through a Proctor and Gamble Alumni Grant have now started 3 new training programs for women.   One is a soap making program, another henna training, and then milk processing.  With these programs we hope to get more women self-sufficient to help their families.  

We are in great appreciation to all our donors and sponsors that have helped in ATEG’s endeavor to make a better life for these our brothers and sisters in the Faladji Camp in Bamako, Mali.  

Sincerely Submitted by,

Paula Saihati