Job Skills for People in Niger

At the end of 2024, we calculated that since starting our work in 2017, we have helped 250 people. In August 2024, Le Sahel, newspaper in Niger, published an article featuring four of DIMA’s clients. You can read about the impact that training from DIMA had on their lives in the link below (you can translate it in Google).

Over the summer, DIMA staff were busy working with weavers. Construction work for a weaving school in the village of Kirubbe Keyna was finished. About 215 weavers were identified in four villages in the Tillabéri region. DIMA is working with them to form a cooperative and is seeking support to help them get thread, equipment, and access to markets.

DIMA has also begun efforts to market handweaving in Niger. We participated in a crafts fair at the US Embassy, a large national fair and an international fair. We have also started working with a South African fashion designer to develop a line of handbags that will be suitable for exporting overseas.

At the end of September, a nine-month training program was finished at the Association Nigerienne des Handicaps Locomoteurs (ANHL) for 50 leather workers who are survivors of polio.  Already in July, they had started to earn money from the sales of products they learned to make in the program.

In the fall there was extensive flooding in Niger. DIMA had to make repairs to the new school in Kirubbe Keyna and the start of school was delayed until January. But we are ready to get going again and look forward to reporting our progress this spring.

Thank you for making our work possible!

Links:

• Le Sahel news article on DIMA clients