The Moringa Plant 

We know that the key to achieving a nutritious diet entails empowering communities to leverage local, natural resources. This is why we run workshops about the highly nutritious moringa plant.

Often dubbed the ‘miracle plant’, moringa is grown across Asia, South America and Africa. It is drought-tolerant, durable and grows rapidly, making it ideal for low-income, rural communities. The wood is soft and perfect for wood-burning stoves. The oil from the plant can be used as a substitute for vegetable oil and used in soaps, lamps and food production equipment. The greatest use for moringa, however, is nutritional.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, just 25 grams of moringa leaf powder supplies a person with their entire day’s calcium and vitamin A needs, half the day’s protein and potassium needs and three-quarters of their iron needs for the day. Eaten as a vegetable during meals, moringa leaves improve childhood nutrition, birth weights and the quality of breast milk.

In our program country Benin, The Hunger Project has had success with a program called Moringa ++. The program promotes the cultivation of moringa trees in epicentre communities to contribute to the overall food security of these communities. People also grind and package moringa leaves to be sold and generate an income. This helps make it easily accessible for families to purchase and include in their diets.

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Header photo by Johannes Odé 

Bangladesh has an extreme child malnutrition rate.

After a devastating famine in 1974, there was an enormous flow of aid to Bangladesh that was required to sustain the country. Reliance on foreign aid has now created a mindset of dependancy for the government and people of Bangladesh.

Twenty-four million people live below the poverty line, the majority of which are women and children. A major factor that contributes to this is the severe subjugation of women and girls that exists in Bangladesh. Discrimination starts right at birth as the birth of a boy is favoured. Girls are breast-fed  for weeks less than boys. They are fed least and last in the family. Malnourished girls are then married off young and give birth to malnourished babies. The cycle continues.

 

How are we breaking this cycle?

Research shows, however, that when women are empowered, all of society benefits. When women have equal rights and earn an income, they reinvest that in things like health, nutrition and education for their families. This means that they are empowering themselves and generations to come to end their own hunger.

The Hunger Project has created initiatives that break the cycle of discrimination. We train women and men as Animators (local volunteer leaders) who are deeply engaged in bringing about real and lasting change across Bangladesh. We work at a grassroots level in select rural areas to deliver training and workshops. This includes Women’s Leadership training that provides intensive education in gender equality and legal/reproductive rights to at least two women per village.

These women then become a resource to all the women in their village, launching campaigns to stop domestic violence and child marriage for good, and educating others to transform their communities so women and girls can flourish.

Invest in a hunger-free Bangladesh today.

The Hunger Project has been working with partner organisations in Malawi to combat the spread of malaria since 2011. 

Malaria remains one of the world’s leading killers. According to the World Health Organization, it claims the life of one child every two minutes. Progress has been made in limiting the scope of the disease in Africa. However, climate change is expanding the range of malaria-carrying mosquitoes, putting populations at risk that haven’t previously been exposed. 

Currently, 57% of malaria fatalities are children younger than five years old. Children who are malnourished are at the highest risk of life-threatening complications.  

As part of the Majete Malaria Project, Animators (local volunteer leaders) in 118 villages have been trained by The Hunger Project. They conduct malaria prevention workshops, improve houses to reduce mosquito bites indoors, and train community health workers on the methods of malaria transmission. 

For maximum impact, The Hunger Project-Malawi has partnered with UNICEF on the sale and distribution of low-cost, anti-malarial bednets within THP’s Epicentre communities. In 2018, 13,857 malaria-preventing bednets were distributed. 

There is a place where women are sent into forests to collect fodder to feed their livestock – despite farmers keeping their cows out of the very same forests for fear that their precious livestock will be eaten by tigers.

This is also a place where every second person you speak to believes a man is allowed to beat his wife.

This place? Is in the state of Uttarakhand, high in the Himalayan mountains and distant from any infrastructure and key education or health services – where the stories you hear constantly remind you of the deep-rooted inequality and persistent hunger.

This way of life is not sustainable, for anyone. It keeps women subjugated,  isolated and discriminated against; men disenfranchised, abusing their power and turning to illegal alcohol for respite; forests decimated because the trees are sold off to big corporations with no benefit to the local community; and the cycle of hunger keeps on turning, as it has for generations gone by.

The cycle continues because, to date, solutions have always been band-aid fixes, and have never been addressed in a sustainable way. A holistic approach has never been taken to social, economic and environmental issues.

The Hunger Project is partnering with champions of change to create sustainable solutions to end their hunger. In fact, sustainability is a core principle of The Hunger Project’s work and is key to any solution we implement in partnership with the community.

One champion of change in Uttarakhand is Basanti – a pioneer of long-term solutions, a symbol of hope and optimism, and a fierce warrior protecting her people and her land.

Basanti is evidence that norms are shifting and that – while not inevitable – it is possible to replace band-aid fixes with sustainable solutions.

A brave form of protest was conducted by the women of a village in Uttarakhand. Led by their fearless leader Basanti, a group of empowered women took matters into their own hands to stop a truck, driven by a criminal cartel, carrying bootleg alcohol into their village.

They stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the middle of the road, physically blocking the truck with their own bodies.

These women said they would rather risk their lives than live in fear.

Women in Uttarakhand know that illegal alcohol is killing their husbands and sons. In February 2019, 70 people died in the area after drinking a batch of tainted illegal alcohol.

Bootleg liquor is also directly linked to the dramatically high domestic violence rates in the region – a place where systemic violence against women has created a belief in women that men are allowed to hit their wives. 47% of women, and 42% of men, believe husbands are permitted to beat their wives.

Social inequality exacerbates and prolongs the devastating cycle of hunger and poverty, and impacts both women and men. To bring about a sustainable end to hunger once and for all, the gender discrimination that has been entrenched in Basanti’s community for generations must be eradicated.

The Hunger Project’s women’s leadership workshops in India are interrupting long-held, harmful social norms and gender roles that bar women from being active, valued community members.

Upon graduation from the workshops, women like Basanti become fierce leaders and champions of sustainable change in their communities. By opening the women up to the leadership and abilities already lying within them, Basanti and others go to great lengths in putting their lives on the line to eliminate social inequality and hunger from their villages forever. They look for the root causes of issues – and work to address them, in order to bring about lasting change.

In a community with limited access to natural resources, conservation is crucial. If the environment is compromised, so too is the food and firewood they rely on.

In the face of this, Basanti is working tirelessly to strengthen the age-old and unique Uttarakhand institution of “forest councils” to protect the forests for generations to come.

 

 

“Our engagement with the forest makes it inevitable for us to feel more responsible for protecting what we consider living, breathing creatures.”  

The elected women of Uttarakhand have banded together to relentlessly fight the increased deforestation that has led to environmental degradation. By vocalising the imminent threat to their environment, they have re-established 50 forest councils to educate government workers about the threats and ensure the forest is protected in government policy.  Under their supervision, thousands of saplings are being planted to help repair the damage that has been done to their local ecosystem. 

We are celebrating not one, not two, but three Epicentres across three different countries all reaching the momentous milestone of Self-Reliance!   

Bougue in Burkina Faso, Chokwe in Mozambique and Wurib in Ethiopia are now communities who have demonstrated the transformative power of The Hunger Project’s unique Epicentre Strategy, joining 28 other self-reliant Epicentre communities across Africa.  

Our Epicentre Strategy is effective, affordable, replicable and built to last, enabling sustainable and holistic change. Self-Reliance is defined as when community members are confident and have the capacity and skills to act as agents of their own development – Bougue, Chokwe and Wurib have demonstrated this against The Hunger Project’s rigorous monitoring and evaluation scoring system. 

Show me the numbers!

Bougue Epicentre – Population 27,370 

Self-Reliance was achieved in partnership with the Victorian Investor Consortium. 

On top of these remarkable results, Bougue has been able to develop a centre for entrepreneurship with more than 77% of the rural households owning non-farm related businesses. This is important because it diversifies their individual income streams as well as the local economy, stimulating jobs and expanding the skillsets of the community.  

Chokwe Epicentre – Population 16, 366 

Self-Reliance at Chokwe was achieved in partnership with The Beeren Foundation & Investor Consortium. 

Chokwe achieved additional positive health-related results: more than 77% of the population know their HIV status, and the prevalence of diarrheal disease in children under 5 is down to 11%. This means women, men and children are living healthier lives.

Wurib Epicentre – Population 22,979 

Self-Reliance at Wurib was achieved in partnership with The Beeren Foundation & Investor Consortium. 

More than 85% of the community in Wurib said they feel they have the power to positively bring about change in their community. On top of these results, the community has ensured that women are represented and are holding leadership roles. This has resulted in Wurib scoring 75 out of 100 onThe Hunger Project’s Women’s Empowerment Index.  

Spotlight on: Bruce Beeren

The positive results in Chokwe and Wurib were achieved in partnership with long-time investor Bruce Beeren, of the Bruce Beeren Foundation. Bruce, who is a member of The Hunger Project Australia’s National Board, has been investing in the end of hunger since 2004, and his unwavering partnership with the communities has led to the results we see today.

“I’ve been investing in The Hunger Project for the past 15 years, so it’s an historic occasion to see the Wurib and Chokwe communities in particular achieve Self-Reliance. Together with a group of people mobilised through my own networks, I have partnered with and invested in both these communities (as well as others) since 2008 and 2013 respectively. In the face of devastating floods, severe droughts and other obstacles, it has taken commitment, resilience and persistence from everyone involved to reach this milestone,” Bruce said.