It was 1962 when I began to collect and study the extraterrestrial channelings from a source called The Confederation of Planets in the Service of the One Infinite Creator, or simply The Confederation. In 1974, I became a channel for this source and have continued to perform this service to this day.

Our group, L/L Research, began publishing books on ETs and the ET philosophy found in these channelings in 1976. Through the years since then we have published our written and channeled materials in 10 other books.

Naturally, we get lots of mail from readers. When people resonate with our material, they often write to ask questions to which they hope we may have an answer. One of the questions most frequently asked is, “How can one person such as I make any difference in this world?” This new series of articles is an attempt to demonstrate how that works.

I have always told people that The Confederation insists that our first mission is inner: We are here to learn to love and to be loved. That is our basic mission. As we learn the lessons of love, we are performing the heart and soul of our work on this earth. We are making a difference!

However, people can also make a difference at the level of manifestation; at the “doing” level. Such manifestations are generally accompanied by sacrifice and unconditional love, working itself out in very practical and down-to-earth terms.

“There is a great deal of life as you experience it that seems to be intransigent and unable to be dealt with in any way except to accept what is. However, there is always a creative way to find the love, the thanksgiving and the joy that are inherent in that pattern, however difficult it is.”

[All Q’uo q'uotes in this article are from sessions on Sept. 17 and Nov. 12, 2006.]

“Intransigent” is a good word to express the conditions that Ariane Alzhara Kirtley found when she chose to spend 2005 in Niger. Ariane, 28, had won a Fulbright Scholarship and was drawn to work in that area because she had spent her early childhood there.

She crossed the Sahara Desert on camelback at the age of 6 months and spent most of her first 10 years in Algeria, Mali, Senegal, the Gambia, the Ivory Coast and Niger, where her parents were photographers for National Geographic and Geo magazines. The Tuareg people who dwell in that large area held a special place in her heart, as she recalled her childhood there and the people’s kindness to her and her family.

And so Ariane returned to Niger in 2005, having completed a degree in anthropology in 2001 and public health in 2003 at Yale University and then completing an internship for CARE in 2004. During that Fulbright study, her research assistant, who came from the province of Azawak, told her of his home area’s desperate struggle for water. Ariane decided, after completing her Fulbright study on women’s and minorities’ health needs in Niger, to visit his home province and see the conditions there for herself.

What she found “blew her away,” she told the Yale Alumni Magazine in its September/October 2006 issue. She found that 50,000 people depended upon two, count them, two wells. Only one of these wells was a steady source of water. The other frequently ran dry. During the three months of rain annually, people dug holes in the dry ground and scooped up water before it could sink into the dirt. For the other nine months, they walked to the wells every day just to bring home enough water for each family member to have a single drink. Some traveled as far as 35 miles round-trip, so their lives revolved around bringing home the precious, rare, muddy water so necessary for survival.

These wells are polluted. There is no infrastructure in Azawak, the poorest province in Niger. Without clement weather or good soil, roads, schools and equipment, the 50,000 Nigerian Tuareg who live there have been trapped in a ceaseless struggle to survive. Their health problems have been chronic, since all the water is full of toxic micro-organisms from animal and human waste.

Ariane’s first response to this appalling situation was to follow in her parents’ footsteps and do a photographic study documenting conditions there. Then she set out to use the photographs and her own indomitable personal determination to make the situation better.

“If you wish to polarize in service to others, start gazing at others with the realization that you are here to help them, just as they are here to help you. Open your minds to the creative question of what seed you might plant that may be helpful.”

Ariane came home from Niger rail-thin, having succumbed to the dysentery and parasites in Azawak. However, as disease wasted her flesh and she lingered near death for a time before slowly recovering her health, her determination grew and she became ever more sturdy. She pondered the situation, studied charts of deep water sources and, as her mission, chose to raise enough money to fund the digging of two deep wells in Azawak. For the last two years, she has traveled and spoken non-stop, showing her gallery of photographs and asking for donations to help the Tuareg people.

Oxfam and CARE have stepped up to the plate. So have thousands of corporate and individual donors who have heard her speak or sympathized with her work as shown on her website. So far, she has raised enough money to dig one of the two wells, $150,000. The bore-hole at Tangarwachane has been started! Now she needs to raise the other half of that funding and get the second well dug.

“We encourage each to realize that they are powerful. Each and every one of you is a sun, radiant, infinite and loving. As you sit in this circle in the gathering twilight, feel the power of your combined love and let it bless the world from your open hearts.”

The name of her non-profit foundation is Amman Imman. The words are part of a Nigerian expression: “Amman imman; ar issudar,” which means “water is life; milk is hope.

Ariane hopes that once the wells are dug and the villagers can get clean water, and get it more easily, the agencies, such as CARE and Oxfam, that have helped her can establish the infrastructure needed to bring more education, food and dreams to the country. With water, the camels will no longer die off. The nomadic lifestyle of the Tuareg will function well again. With the camels will come milk, and with milk, hope.

“If you choose to adopt and embrace faith, no suffering can break you, for you choose the truth and all else is illusion.

“If you choose hope, those wings shall fly you where you need to go.

“For each entity, morale and attitude are a matter of choice. There is no limitation which can keep an entity from grooming and settling his own mind and his own heart along the lines of peace and joy and thankfulness, if he so desires to seek those levels of being within himself. And as each entity does these things, so the world will change.”

I open my arms and embrace your spirit. Today I pray that we may seek the peace, joy and thankfulness within our open hearts, knowing that as each of us does this, the world will be transformed by the power of love.