Next in our series, Rooted in Resilience: From Crisis to Opportunity, is the story of Habi Sekere in Mali. For more photos and stories of the Aga Khan Foundation’s partners, please download our 2013 annual report.

For 40 years, Habi Sekere has eked out a livelihood by raising livestock at the edge of the Sahara Desert. Like three out of four people in Mali’s central Mopti region, Habi’s livelihood depends on farming. Even in good times, most households in the region endure a hungry season every year before the harvest. To get by, they face hard choices, sometimes going into debt, selling their animals or other valuables, sending children to find work, or relying on money from faraway relatives.

That vulnerability worsened in 2012 with a double blow: civil unrest and disastrously low rainfall. When Aga Khan Foundation surveyed communities around Mopti, they found that all crop harvests had plummeted, providing only a fraction of the nutrition needed to sustain households and their livestock. The entire rice harvest was lost. With funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Response, Recovery and Resilience in Mali (R3M) project brought emergency help to increase food security for the long term. It also brought new skills that Habi could use long after the crisis.

Most livestock breeders are men but Habi, age 60, is among the women who have gained the respect of her peers. Identified as a key influencer, she attended the project’s “Livestock as a Business” classes and received training in new methods for managing her farm and finances. She also learned how to teach others.

“I had never received training before,” she said. “In December 2012, the R3M project provided me with training in how to fatten animals.”

“I always wanted to teach others,” she added, “so when I was given responsibility to train the group, I really thought I must be dreaming.” Habi was one of 480 trainers who then taught those skills to their market garden groups, multiplying the impact.

The project has improved access to nutritious foods and markets, and increased household skills for producing drought-resistant crops. Furthermore, by combining training in nutrition and sanitation with improved food production, the Foundation achieved holistic improvements for a relatively small cost. All the project’s activities — from training and introduction of improved seed and livestock feed, to digging wells for drinking and garden irrigation, and nutrition education – helped to grow Malians’ long-term resilience for shocks in the future. All told, the project reached over 73,000 Malians.

“This training helped me to better understand how to professionalize my business,” Habi said. “Now I think that a 50 percent increase in income is very possible.”

Now Habi sees beyond an immediate crisis and envisions a fruitful future: that’s the essence of resilience.

For more about AKF’s work in Mali, download the 2013 annual report. Check out the full Rooted in Resilience: From Crisis to Opportunity series here, and be sure to join us on Facebook!