Category: News

The Hunger Project’s innovative and holistic approach to ending world hunger calls for the empowerment of rural communities in India, Africa and Bangladesh to take charge of their own development, transform entrenched harmful traditional practices and beliefs, and be active citizens who know their rights and hold the government to account.

All of our programs – while adapted to meet local opportunities and challenges – share three essential things that will end hunger for good:

1) Start by empowering women as key change agents

The vast majority of people living in hunger and poverty are women. Women bear almost all responsibility for meeting the basic needs of the family, yet are systematically denied the resources, information and freedom of action they need to fulfil this responsibility.

Studies show that when women are supported and empowered, all of society benefits. Their families are healthier, more children go to school, agricultural productivity improves and incomes increase. That’s why we focus on building the capacity of women.

2) Mobilise entire communities into self-reliant action

Our aim is to overcome the deep resignation within people living in hunger, and awaken them to the possibility of a different future, one free from hunger. We build people’s knowledge, skills and leadership, so they can take action to improve their own communities.

3) Foster effective partnerships to engage local government 

We work in partnership with local government bodies to ensure that they are effective, include women in leadership positions, are directly accountable to local people, and provide access to resources and information. We also educate and encourage communities to demand what they’re entitled to from their governments, including services, resources and financial schemes and benefits.

You can read more in our 2021 Global Investor Report.

 

The Hunger Project Bangladesh recently led a community-wide event to raise awareness of the harmful effects of child marriage and to highlight The Hunger Project’s commitment to empowering women and girls.

Around the world, 39,000 girls get married every day. This is a challenge in low-income countries like Bangladesh where one in three girls are married before the age of 18.

Participants of the community event presented information about child marriage, expressing their opinions and their priorities – opening up a dialogue about a long-held community issue. The session successfully ended with a joint pledge to reduce child marriage from 81 percent to less than 30 percent in their community.

The event, which took place as part of The Hunger Project’s involvement in the Her Choice Alliance, saw volunteers and staff members share new data about child marriage in communities across Bangladesh. Her Choice is an alliance of organisations that are working to halt child marriage in 11 countries, with the long-term goal of creating communities in which girls and young women are free to decide if, when and whom to marry.

At The Hunger Project, we believe in measuring what matters. Our philosophy of monitoring and evaluating our community-level programs is centred on the understanding that empowering individuals and communities with knowledge, information and opportunities is essential for achieving sustainable self-reliance and ending hunger.

All of our programs are monitored through a participatory monitoring process. This means that we start with grassroots, community-led engagement to close the feedback loop between our projects’ performance and community expectations and goals. Objectivity is key, so we embed transparency and accountability for data throughout all of our monitoring and evaluation processes.

Learn more about how The Hunger Project ends hunger and poverty in Bangladesh.

The country with one of the highest rates of child marriages has taken a major step to end the practice by adopting a constitutional amendment that raises the minimum age of marriage from 15 to 18 years-old. 

In a major win for young girls all across the continent, on 14 February the Malawi Parliament took a landmark decision towards advancing gender equality by banning child marriage in the country. Unanimously the Parliament of Malawi adopted a constitutional amendment that raises the minimum age of marriage from 15 to 18 years, for both girls and boys. The amendment aligns the Constitution with the 2015 Marriage, Divorce and Family Relations Act enacted by the Parliament.

Each year around 15 million girls will be married before they turn 18. The Hunger Project and 0ur partners have been strong advocates for an end to child marriage. 

According to the UN, half of the girls in Malawi are often married before the age of 18 and teen pregnancies contribute to 20-30 per cent of maternal deaths in the country. The practice of child marriage locks girls into a cycle of poverty, with many forced to leave their education after they marry, rendering girls more vulnerable to violence.

The new reform aligns the Constitution with Malawi’s international and regional obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and others, including the Sustainable Development Goal 5 on gender equality.

Your donation can help bring an end to child marriage.

 

 

We are thrilled to announce the launch of The Butterfly Effect initiative in partnership with CAMILLA.

This initiative will create a brighter future for 1,000 young girls and their families in the Bihar community through education and training to end critical issues affecting their safety, freedom and livelihood. CAMILLA’s key mission of the initiative includes ending child marriage and delivering education and training on human rights, nutrition and sanitation for young girls, aged 13 to 18.

With dreams as big as this, CAMILLA needed to kickstart it to ensure the best infrastructure and mentors were in place. Through the sales of special-edition scarves in CAMILLA boutiques across December and January, they generated $50,000, with 100% of all proceeds exclusively used to launch the initiative. 

This grassroots funding would not have been possible without the support of CAMILLA customers who have shared the journey with CAMILLA from day one. For this, we are so thankful, as are the girls whose lives CAMILLA customers will help change.

The next fundraising phase will be the biggest! As part of CAMILLA’s Indian collection, The Long Way Home, CAMILLA has created a special print for The Hunger Project. For every piece of apparel and accessories from The Butterfly Effect print sold, 10% of profits will go towards funding The Hunger Project’s adolescent girls program.

Camilla Franks wearing The Butterfly Effect print.

CAMILLA’s overall aim is to raise a combined contribution of $120,000 to invest in the bright future of participants in the program.

India has a special place in CAMILLA’s hearts. It is a place that they turn to for inspiration, for spirituality, for craftsmanship and for family. Their hope is that they can help navigate positive change within communities that have changed their lives, too. 

Find out more and shop The Butterfly Effect print here.

Three Epicentres in Africa have declared self-reliance – meaning the communities have demonstrated the confidence, capacity and skills to act as agents of their own development… an amazing achievement.

Mesqan Epicentre in Ethiopia –  An outstanding example of the progress made in the community is that the prevalence of diarrhea in children under 5 decreased by 37%, to only 7% of children, thanks to work by trained volunteers to raise community awareness and increase access to safe water and sanitation. Congratulations to our partners at Mesqan Epicentre and our team in Ethiopia!

Kiboga Epicentre in Uganda –  There was an 86% decrease in the proportion of households in extreme poverty since the time of construction. Congratulations to our partners at Kiboga Epicentre and the team in Uganda!

Zakpota Epicentre in Benin  – The Zakpota community in Benin have successfully reduced hunger by 96% in the past 4 years! Congratulations to our partners at Zakpota Epicentre.

When people are empowered to become the solution to their own problems they emerge as courageous, innovative, leaders who create sustainable and lasting changes in their communities.

Image credit: Johannes Odé

The Hunger Project Ghana is partnering with the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to train Community Health Nurses (CHN) as midwife assistants to address the shortage of midwives at Community Health Planning and Services (CHPS) compounds in three regions across the country.

Supporting rural women and young children is crucial to The Hunger Project’s work, and ensuring safe and adequate maternal care is at the top of our priorities. Ghana’s maternal mortality rate is among the worst in the world, with an average of 300-500 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to 2015 UN data. The shortage of midwives and health services puts pregnant women and their children at heightened risk of delivery complications and mortality.

As part of The Hunger Project’s holistic, women-centred, community-led development methodology, this project supports work in 15 districts across three regions in Ghana – Eastern, Volta and Central – with funding from the Else-Kronner-Fresenius Foundation over the next two years. Communities will work to improve maternal health by providing 24-hour maternal and childcare services in sub-districts to address the shortage of midwives.

Across The Hunger Project’s Epicentres in Ghana, community health committees assist in the operation of health clinics, which include pre and post-natal care services. The health clinics are an integral component of our overall Epicenter Strategy across Africa. During the first three quarters of 2017, over 2,300 women access prenatal care at one of our health clinics. More than 11,000 people accessed health services of any kind at one of our clinics.

To learn more about this initiative, see related press coverage here and here.

Post courtesy of The Hunger Project Global Office.

When we recently visited the health clinic in Bofel (a remote village in Senegal), the committee there told us that the most common complaint people came to see them with was the flu.

Before The Hunger Project led community discussions about the importance of using mosquito nets, the most common complaint had been malaria and diarrhoea.

Along with educational talks, The Hunger Project made sure nets were accessible to the community and developed an action plan in collaboration with our village partners to help transform sanitation levels, cleanliness, skills and education.  Now people are using toilets instead of practising open defecation.  Because human waste is no longer contaminating the streets of the village, the incidence of diarrhoea and the spread of other diseases has decreased.

Before The Hunger Project came to Bofel a year ago, there were only 13 toilets in the village.  As part of the action plan, another 19 were built.  32 out of 35 households now have toilets in them and the health of people in the village is ever increasing.

The local sanitation team conducts check-ups in people’s homes, where they monitor for open defecation. Once per week, they do a village clean-up day; taking waste far from the village, to be burnt and the ashes buried.  The village is much cleaner now and children can play without the risk of infection and illness. They are healthier than they have ever been, so they can go to school and become Boffel’s leaders for generations to come.

According to UNAIDS, more than 36 million people in the world are living with HIV/AIDS. It is estimated that half of those people are unaware of their HIV status.

In order to stop the spread of the disease, reduce the incidence of related deaths and remove stigma, it is essential that effective educational programs are widely accessible.

In Africa, our epicentre programs trained over 91,000 people in 2016 to understand HIV/AIDS and gender inequality issues. Through this training, village leaders like Alesia from Ghana (pictured), gain the knowledge and confidence required to reach out to people in their communities, encouraging them to seek help in the form of testing and treatment.

Alesia, and her fellow ‘HIV Animators’, run workshops within their communities where they educate people about the causes and effects of the disease. They explain how gender inequalities fuel HIV infection rates and how HIV/AIDS can not only be treated but also prevented. ‘HIV Animators’ empower people with the understanding that they can put an end to the spread of the disease within their own communities.

The UN General Assembly holds a vision of moving toward ‘zero new infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths’. By providing education, prevention strategies and treatment in highly affected communities we move closer to this vision. We see attitudes toward the disease change, stigma dissolve and a decrease in newly infected people.