The Road to Lilato:

1

• The Road to Lilato
• Food for Work Project

2
The village of Lilato was one of the most
isolated villages in the Dogondoutchi region of
Niger.
3
Due to large rock formations and deep sand, the
villagers couldnt get to the main road. Without
access to the main road, there was very limited
access to food, not to mention health care
services and general mobility to nearby areas.
4
It was difficult to transport the sick people to
the hospital, to get to market and to bring back
food supplies to the village. During the rainy
season a trip outside the village was virtually
impossible.
5
CRS staff visited Lilato and joined a community
meeting where the village members identified the
inaccessibility of the village as their major
problem. They expressed that they wanted to
improve the lives of their families and the
community but did not have the means to do so.
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• The community leaders and CRS staff agreed
  to implement a Food for Work project in Lilato.
  Village members who worked on the road would be
  given a monthly supply of grain. CRS would also
  provide technical assistance on how to measure
  and build the road.

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With the food and technical assistance the
village members jumped into the road project
full force.
8
For ten days over 270 men and women of Lilato dug
a 400-meter shortcut through a hill and
constructed a road to the village.
9
With this new and improved shortcut, the usual 7
mile trip from the main road to the village was
reduced to 3 miles.
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And access to the village was guaranteed all year
round.
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A noteworthy component of the road project was
that women worked hand in hand with the men.
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• Tarana was one of the women
• who worked on the Lilato road
• project.
• Women in Niger are among the
• most marginalized groups
• in the country. Only 5 of
• women can read or write. Aside
• from working in the fields they
• struggle daily to feed their
• families.
• This is made more difficult during
• the soudure, the hunger period,
• or when their crops had been
• affected by severe drought or
• locust infestation.

13
For Tarana and women in a village like Lilato, on
any given day, the first thing they do in the
morning is to go get water from the well. There
is no running water in the village and women have
to carry buckets of water from the well to their
homes.
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Every morning women and their children would
also pound the millet that would be cooked into
buol, a porridge of millet and milk. They would
then go to work in their field or work on the
road project. In the afternoon the women gather
water once more, prepare the evenings dinner,
wash up and go to bed.
15

• Tarana shared that when
• the year is good, she
• would have enough food
• to feed the family.
• On the other hand when
• there is a poor harvest due to
• a severe drought they would
• not have enough food to eat
• until the next harvest season.
• Once their food supply
• has run out her first source
• of food would be bitter
• fruit from the anza tree
• that she would cook for
• her family. This is the only
• food that they would eat
• in a bad year.

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Through the Food for Work project, Tarana did not
only get food to meet the immediate needs of her
family but it also enabled her to contribute to
the development of her community.