OneWorld.net (U.S.)

Veronica from Kagaba village in Uganda raised several children and grandchildren. In 2003, she received a loan from The Hunger Project – an international NGO based in New York – for $120. With that first loan she bought a cow. The milk it produces is drunk by the family – improving their nutrition, and the excess is sold – increasing their income. After repaying her first loan, she took out a second loan and bought a sewing machine for a tailoring business. Now she has enough money to buy essential medicines and keep the children in school. She now celebrates as, for the first time, one of her grandchildren completes school! The Hunger Project’s strategies realize results like these on the ground in Africa, South Asia and Latin America. A partner in the worldwide movement to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – 8 quantifiable targets to alleviate poverty – The Hunger Project utilizes an alternative approach to attaining these goals, one that predates the MDGs.

Promoting Gender Equality The Hunger Project’s philosophy revolves around promoting gender equality. ‘If women had not been for centuries and were not still subjugated, marginalized, and disempowered, leaders from more than 150 countries would not have met at the United Nations, and you and I wouldn’t be here tonight trying to figure out how to meet peoples’ basic needs,’ Joan Holmes, The Hunger Project’s President, said Saturday (Oct. 22) at the organization’s annual gala dinner.

Calling gender inequality the root cause of many of the problems the MDGs address, Holmes underscored how empowering women translates into faster economic growth, less corruption in governance, lower childhood malnutrition and child mortality, increased agricultural production and more children in school, including girls.

‘We work with both women and men in Mexico, but women are more responsive,’ said Lorena Vazquez, Mexico’s Country Director. ‘This makes sense because women are the poorest, and they also are the ones with the most responsibility to improve the lives of their children. We empower women to expand their farms and grow new crops, such as vegetables for better nutrition. Women form businesses and earn money. As they earn money, they have more status in the family.’

Developing Local Leadership While much of the public dialogue around the MDGs has centered on the need for more foreign aid – potentially causing further dependency and corruption – The Hunger Project has implemented strategies that make progress in achieving the MDGs, without huge influxes of aid. The Hunger Project strategy is different in that it is based primarily on developing local leadership and resources.

‘I can attest that epicenter food banks are lifesavers,’ said Rowlands Kaotcha, the Country Director from Malawi – a country which is currently experiencing famine. ‘Some people are experiencing famine. But at our epicenters, people were prepared. For them, drought is not turning into a famine.’

Centered around clusters of villages termed Epicenters, this strategy empowers people to meet their basic needs on a sustainable basis. One of the primary goals of the Epicenters is to mobilize communities to come together to accomplish self-reliant and creative actions at the local level to achieve the community-wide goal of ending hunger. ‘Until we had Hunger Project epicenters, women had no facilities to reduce maternal mortality,’ said Dr. Naana Agyemang-Mensah, Ghana’s Country Director. ‘At the epicenters, we provide a safe place for births. We train the birth attendants. We have a nurse on duty 24 hours a day. We have a doctor come once a week. We educate young women on the importance of waiting to have children until they are old enough – and to have good nutrition, vaccinations and checkups. For African women, this is revolutionary. We’ve not lost any mothers at our epicenters.’ Strategies that Empower When indigenous people were excluded from economic progress in Latin America, The Hunger Project mobilized and empowered them with information and skills. They now have voice in their governments and access to resources that are rightfully theirs.

When India for the first time mandated that women serve on village councils but provided no support for their success, The Hunger Project invested in these newly-elected women, who are now leaders impacting the lives of more than 12 million people.

When foreign aid flooded Bangladesh and created a culture of dependency, passivity and resignation, The Hunger Project mobilized over two million women and men to take self-reliant action to end their own hunger.

‘We’ve trained 60,000 volunteer animators who truly see themselves as a new generation of freedom fighters: fighting for the second liberation of our country – liberation from hunger and poverty,’ said Dr. Badiul Majumdar, the Bangladesh Country Director. ‘We have mobilized more than 4,000 villages, where more than 6 million people live. We launch campaigns from our comprehensive set of 40 priority actions to meet basic needs. Many villages are now 100% literate, 100% immunized and have 100% sanitary latrines.’

Challenges Ahead Many challenges lie ahead. In Latin America, the challenge is to ensure equal rights and opportunities for indigenous and Afro-descendant people. In Africa, where corruption costs economies more than $148 billion a year, leadership is the biggest challenge. Gender inequality is the biggest obstacle in South Asia, which has rates of low birth-weight babies and severe child malnutrition twice as high as Africa despite having surplus food in storage.

‘In India, we have mountains of grain in surplus, yet we have the world’s highest rates of malnutrition,’ Shabnam Aziz, The Hunger Project State Coordinator from Rajasthan, told Saturday’s audience. ‘And this is because we have the worst discrimination against women and girls in the world. Girls are just not cared for. They are fed last and least. They are denied health care. They are born underweight and undernourished, and they stay that way even as they become mothers – and it’s impossible for them to give birth to well-nourished, healthy babies. And so this cycle continues for generation after generation.’

The developed world has equal challenges. ‘Development aid is not a long-term solution but at this point in history, increased, effective and improved aid is absolutely necessary,’ Holmes said. Farm subsidies from wealthy countries – now totaling $300 billion a year – should be reduced.

Poor people seen as the solution, not the problem ‘Individuals, when they are given opportunities rather than obstacles, when they are seen as the solution not the problem, when they are recognized as the key change agents not beneficiaries, and when they are embraced as full citizens rather than relegated to second class status – then they end their own hunger – then they get out of the poverty trap and build lives of self-reliance and dignity,’ Holmes said Saturday.