Community leaders in Kawé , located in the Diére, meet with Andando staff to discuss the future of their primary school.
Andando has always grown by listening. For years, our work in northern Senegal thrived in the Walo, the floodplains along the Senegal River. But after every success there, local leaders would pull us aside with the same request: “This is wonderful, but can you take it to the Diéri? Almost no one is helping there.”
Without local access to clean water, families in the Diéri are often forced into multi-day journeys just to meet their basic needs.
Families in the Diéri are often forced into multi-day journeys just to meet their basic needs. Here, one family uses a donkey-pulled water cart to fill up with water in Senobowal and make the long journey home.
The Diéri is the vast, arid pastoral zone south of the river, home to indigenous Peulh herders who have raised livestock in balance with this land for centuries. Today, that balance is fracturing. When rain fails or a water point breaks, families are forced into crisis migrations. Children are pulled from school, and access to medical care for pregnant women, children, and treatable illnesses becomes all but impossible as families move farther away.
With a new borehole well, the existing water tower can meet the needs of Senobowal and the surrounding 10 villages that rely it for their basic needs.
We saw this reality firsthand in Senobowal where we were initially called to build only a health clinic. The community quickly revealed other urgent needs though, leading to our most comprehensive "whole village" intervention to date.
In the coming months, we’ll be sharing more about how the clinic, solar borehole well, women’s garden, woodlot, and school support are transforming life there for the better.
A lifeline for the region: Senobowal’s solar borehole serves 5,000 people and 30,000 livestock across 10 villages.
Now, other Diéri communities are asking for that same chance. The scale of the need and the difficulty of this work is immense, but so too is the potential. These families are the frontline stewards of this region, quite literally holding back the advance of the Sahara.
In the vast Diéri, schools are few and far between. In Kawé, we are prioritizing classroom renovations and proper sanitation to keep students in school year-round.
The women of Peté Olé are ready to start a cooperative garden to feed their families, they are simply waiting for a reliable water source.
For this landscape to survive, its people must be able to thrive. By building these systems of stability, we are ensuring that the stewards of the Diéri can stay to protect it for generations to come. To the best of our ability, Andando is answering that call, one village at a time.
