This past October Tom and I participated in two workshops which were held in Burkina Faso, the country to the north of Togo. We spent a week at the end of our work to visit Togo and see for ourselves how the work is going there. We rode about 10 hours south on a bus to make the visit. This bus was air conditioned and we were given tea  or coffee and a sandwich when boarding. The host placed wastebaskets up and down the aisle for waste. It was impressive for Africa!

It had been six years since I left Kara, Togo, home of the women’s organization and NGO AFASA. Now I was returning for a visit. Would the center be intact? Would the staff still be teaching the village and town women to read? Would the book production department still be producing written materials? Would the income generation projects still be bringing in revenue to better their lives? Was there any health work going on?

I was pleased to find a clean center that is functioning and a staff that is very active in spite of a very low income. The original AFASA project was started by a grant for five entire years which provided salaries, office equipment, and transportation costs. A few years later the American Embassy and a women’s professional organization (5.0) funded a great center, far nicer than any of the homes of the women. From the beginning the AFASA women understood that they would need to find ways to support their organization and work; that the nice salaries would not last forever and that income generation of many sorts would be the key to their survival. They are finding it difficult to provide their own salaries, maintain their center and office equipment and provide their own transportation. So it is understandable that the building needs repairs, salaries are low, down from $100 a month $40 a month, and the AFASA staff is scraping by to provide services for the 25 groups of women in various surrounding villages that they support. Yet they have prevailed. It is remarkable.

I, the expatriate co-founder, left Togo in 2003, so you can see that these resilient women care and take ownership of their organization. I feel God allowed me to go back to visit AFASA to see the situation, be grateful for what is happening, and to understand their present challenges and try to help.

The women had a good start and were taught to plan, proceed, stop, evaluate and re-plan. They have been magnificent. Projects included chicken-raising, selling salt, making compost, making objects from cloth to sell, loaning out plastic chairs for funerals and civic events, drying fruits and vegetables, to name a few.

What I realize and realize afresh is that development is very hard and each new idea and thrust brings challenges. The chickens got bird flu and had to be killed, the person in the capitol coordinating the salt shipment is no longer functioning, the importing of the cloth products to the US has high charges, and the plastic chairs break and are not replaced by the loaners as agreed upon. Everything is hard. Knowing when to stop an activity and when to persevere is an art and not easily attained. But AFASA is still moving ahead with over 400 women learning to read last year. Health lessons continue and village women still continue to make small revenue to help themselves in various ways. There are numerous testimonies of spiritual growth and a betterment of lives.

I have returned home with a fresh determination to stand by these courageous women. I believe one big hole to fill is that of insufficient salaries for the staff. Raising the salaries to the $100 a month level is vital to the life of AFASA and I would ask your prayers for that. They need about $300 more a month to accomplish this.

I was also overwhelmed by the personal needs – one staff woman needs glasses, another a surgery to remove a metal pin in her leg placed there to heal a fracture after a motor bike  accident. Two of the women and the one man on staff need help in educating their children. One staff woman is expecting her fourth child and will undoubtedly have medical expenses there. At the present time, none of these individuals has the needed money for these costs. One staff member cannot afford the monthly injections for a mentally ill spouse to prevent aggression.                                 . 
 
The bottom line for the project seems to be to encourage the women to continue to help themselves as much as possible (and they do) but outside help seems to be in order. I will be actively looking for some grants and perhaps some training to add some stimulus to their project. They are attempting to sell batik material on the web. I would ask you to consider alerting your friends to this new endeavor.

We will soon post some projects on the web site that would be ideal for groups or individuals. They are small investments for literacy classes, for economic upstarts, for repainting the center and for other activities.

I am pleased to say that AFASA is one of the outstanding NGOs (Non-governmental organizations) in the region. This last year the government asked them to help test women throughout the area for literacy.

So thanks for listening as I shared my heart. No purchase or contribution is too small to help them advance. It will be great to encourage them. Please contact me(Esther_Marmor@sil,org) for further information or go online and buy some fabric. There are a few one-of-a-kind items as well. We’re adding Pay Pal to the site and we will have a shipment of various colors of batik around the first of the year. Thanks so much!

Esther Marmor
Co-founder of AFASA with Dora Balle