Toward the Final Milestone for the End of Hunger

Message from Joan Holmes, President of The Hunger Project

At the beginning of the new millennium, The Hunger Project has entered a new era of our work — an era designed to achieve the final milestone for the end of hunger. The final milestone means that we are facing the final challenges for the end of hunger, and those that are perhaps the most challenging to overcome.

Over the years, we have grown in our understanding of the persistence of hunger and what must be done to end it. Hunger persists because hungry people, primarily women, not only lack the opportunity to end their own hunger — they are systematically denied that opportunity.

The inescapable conclusion is that people-centered approaches to ending hunger will ultimately succeed only when they are coupled with powerful strategies for social transformation.

This is the hallmark of the final milestone. The work of this era comprises two critical issues:

• Democracy at the local level — Rural people must have the opportunity to gain the authority and resources they need to meet their basic needs, and to obtain control over their destinies.
• A fundamental transformation in gender relations — Women must have the opportunity to participate as full and equal partners in the process of development, and gain voice in the decisions that affect their lives.

In 1999, we launched our first new program in this era — the African Woman Food Farmer Initiative. This initiative has already mobilized hundreds of thousands of people committed to the economic empowerment of the women who grow Africa’s food.

In 2000 in South Asia, we launched the South Asia Initiative, designed to empower grassroots women leaders as the key change agents for the end of hunger, and to mobilize government, organizations, media and influential people at all levels of society to support this process.

We continued to expand and deepen the impact of our Strategic Planning-in-Action (SPIA) activities in 11 countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

And in our Investment Program, we expanded our team of committed individuals who are enrolling investors at all levels of investment. Financially, we have completed our seventh straight year of solid financial growth.

It is with these successes and future challenges that we enter 2001 — solidly poised for continued breakthroughs and strategic impact.

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