When Fatou N’diaye made this comment in June 2004, she was part of World Renew’s Free A Family® program in Senegal. She and her husband, Bassirou, lived in a low-income, urban area on the outskirts of the capital city, Dakar, with their four children. The N’diaye family were involved a variety of World Renew programs and Free A Family® supporters received updates about them four times per year for several years. Recently, World Renew –Senegal staff looked up the N’diaye family to find out what they were doing now.

One of the programs that the N’diaye family was involved in back in the early 2000’s was community savings. Both Fatou and Bassirou belonged to neighbourhood groups known as “tontines.” Each tontine consisted of 15-30 people who met together on a weekly basis and contributed a set amount to a group savings pool.  The group members could then use some of those pooled funds to invest in business opportunities.

Today, Fatou continues to meet and save money with her neighbourhood group.  She uses her loans to purchase supplies and invest in her business of making and selling incense. She also sells breakfast from her house to those going to work.

She puts this income to good use feeding the many family members living in her home. Her oldest son, Ousseynou, is a metal worker.  He and his wife and two children live with Fatou and Bassirou. The other son, Moustapha, works in Mauritania, but his wife and three children live in Senegal in the family home.

Bassirou has been quite sick for the last six years, so he has limited his activities and is unable to bring in an income, but he enjoys the hustle and bustle of the house filled with grandchildren.

Another part of the family’s involvement in World Renew programs involved adolescent health. In 2001, the family’s oldest daughter, Dado, joined the adolescent health program put on by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Senegal (now known as Senegal Lutheran Development Services or SLDS).  This could be seen as somewhat radical in a society where young women are often kept at home and out of shool.

With little formal education and few job opportunities, girls in Senegal are at a high risk of early marriage, early pregnancy, AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. The SLDS program educated families and communities about the risks of these choices. They also encouraged greater dialogue between parents and children, and provided options for teens to choose a better future.

While Dado lacked much formal education, she quickly latched on to the lessons being taught. Two years later, she was selected to be one of the program’s “peer educators” and began to teach lessons to other groups of girls each week.

“We have seen Dado become more mature and responsible during her time in the program,” Fatou said.  “The more she learns, the more she gains confidence and the less likely she will be to be swayed by peer pressure.”

When Free A Family stopped reporting on the N’diaye family in 2007, Dado and her peer educator colleagues said that they hoped that the girls who were in their groups would have the capacity to one day teach their own children so that the entire community would be a safe place to live.   

Today, that is just what is happening. Dado is a mother herself. She met her husband, Sakho, when she was in her early 20’s and they were married in 2006.  Currently, they live in Bordeaux, France where Sakho works as a nautical navigator. They have three sons who are aged 7, 2 and 6 months. Dado works hard to make sure her children are raised with the values that she has learned.

World Renew currently has representative families in Asia, Latin America, East Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa.