Fatimata’s Story
“We are united; we are one family.”
We want to tell you a story.
Fatimata was born and raised in Keur Madike, but in 1989, her community were deported to Senegal.
“When we returned, we found our Moorish brothers in our place. At the beginning and for a certain period of time, we had problems with them because they occupied our houses and used all our goods.”
Concordis has been working in Mauritania since 2013. We’re committed to working with communities to help them resolve their own problems. We believe this is more effective and much more sustainable than trying to impose solutions from outside, so we’ve trained and financed the work of 110 community mediators – local people who are well placed to help their communities find sustainable solutions to their differences.
Concordis is helping women like Fatimata to build resilience through economic diversification away from agriculture.
At the height of the pandemic, there was little availability of face masks in the south of Mauritania. We turned crisis into opportunity. Concordis obtained funding to make face masks and used it to enable women-led cooperatives made up of women from both communities to create shared livelihoods.
More face masks means COVID-19 is less likely to spread
Investing in womens' livelihoods makes them more independent
Income can be invested in agricultural methods that increase yield and food security
Increased food security improves resilience to shocks like crop failure
Generates sustainable income for the members
This is what conflict transformation looks like. Women who were on different sides of the conflict now have a shared livelihood, a reason to build peace.
This week, all donations to Concordis are doubled. That’s one donation, double the impact for peace. Help us to help more women like Fatimata by clicking the button below.
“Concordis and others came to organise dialogues between us and we understood that without peace and understanding, nothing can change. Now everything has changed, the Moors are united with the Wolof families and the Wolof are united with the Moors. They marry each other and give their children each others’ names. We are united; we are one family.”