A woman farmer in northeast Nigeria wants many of the same things that you do – she has hopes: food for her family, healthy kids, money to pay for school, so that her children have it better than she did.
That future is uncertain – tomorrow may look as different for all of us as 2020 looked from 2019.
She faces hard choices, not fewer choices.
Does she keep her children home from school and use that money for schools fee to feed them and borrow from that future that she wants for them.
Does she keep her kids home from school because groups like Boko Haram may kidnap, enslave and rape them? Keeping them safe today, but only more at risk of poverty tomorrow.
Does she go to her fields, so that she can farm to feed her family and make money, but risk being raped, murdered or kidnapped from Boko Haram.
Poverty in fragile states is not only about having fewer choices, it is about often having only bad options-
We are all connected. Violence that happens there affects us here. Diseases that happen there can happen here.
Economic instability can be felt everywhere.
She needs to have the power to adapt. She needs to have meaningful choices. Restored agency. You too have a choice. We are all connected. You have a choice to stand with her. She is not alone.
