MARCH 18, 1998

President's Report - Accomplishments of 1997 and Strategic Focus for 1998

To: Members of the Global Board of Directors

From: Joan Holmes

Last year was truly a remarkable year. We intended to celebrate our 20th year in a way that would advance the work of ending hunger, and I believe we achieved that result.

As I had the opportunity of informing you by letter earlier this year, during 1997 we:

• increased the impact of our work in India, Bangladesh, Ghana and Senegal and launched new programs in Benin, Burkina Faso and Latin America;
• increased our income to the highest level in this decade, exceeding the ambitious projections we presented to you early last year; and
• carefully controlled our expenses, thereby increasing our operating reserve beyond our long-standing target of $2 million.

Following our meetings last October, it became clear that, organizationally, we have crossed a threshold in the breadth and maturity of the organization. Both in our staff and volunteer leadership worldwide, there is greater alignment and responsibility – a multiplicity of individuals able to lead our work true to our principles.

As I also informed you in February, it is clear that, as we continue to expand, it will be more important than ever for The Hunger Project to keep its strategic focus. During 1998, therefore, we will focus on achieving four overarching priorities in all our work:

• Confronting and transforming the subjugation of women as central to the work of ending hunger;
• Achieving a breakthrough in our ability to measure and document the qualitative improvement in people’s lives achieved through our work;
• Expanding our program; and
• Expanding income through expanding our global movement of investors.

Details of all these accomplishments will be included in the accompanying reports from our leaders around the world. In this report, I will summarize our major accomplishments in each priority.

Priorities and Accomplishments

Priority #1: Confronting and transforming the subjugation of women

Hunger affects women the most, and hunger persists to a large degree due to the economic, social and political subjugation, marginalization and disempowerment of women. In 1998, we will ensure that confronting and transforming this condition is at the forefront of all our work. While The Hunger Project has done pioneering work for the empowerment of women in recent years, we must further transform ourselves and further restructure the way we’re organized, in order to cause the breakthroughs required to truly ensure that women gain the opportunities required for hunger to be ended.

This priority was officially adopted by the chairs of our state councils in India last August. Since then, as we’ve discussed this with our colleagues in Bangladesh and Africa, it is clear that our focus on women’s issues must be global.

To begin implement this priority, we have launched the Women’s Initiative on Ending Hunger. This initiative includes actions in both the developed and developing world. Some of the initial steps that have been taken include:

• A 2-day "summit" of 31 women who are investors and activists in The Hunger Project was held in New York, launching an education and advocacy initiative for women in the developed world to learn the issues, find their own voice and stand in solidarity and partnership with women in developing countries by directing their financial resources to the issue that affects women the most – hunger.
• Women investors will travel to Bangladesh in May and to India in November to learn more about these issues first hand, and empower themselves as spokespeople and fund-raisers while expressing their partnership and solidarity.
• A research effort is underway to identify the specific action steps that will be required to transform the social conditions that hold the subjugation of women in place.
• In India, a special strategic forum on this issue is being planned for November, and steps are being taken to enlist additional powerful women into leadership positions on our councils.

Priority #2: Monitoring/measuring/reporting

For our work on the ground to make a powerful difference in transforming the structure of society, we must be able to measure, report and communicate the qualitative changes that have been achieved in the lives of people. In 1998 we are committed to achieving a breakthrough in our ability to measure, document and communicate our results.

This problem is not unique to The Hunger Project. Traditional measurement schemes in development are based most often on the "service delivery" paradigm of development, rather than the "empowerment" paradigm. The middle-east regional office of Unicef observed several years ago that, while they had spent $50 million on village development and could document where the money had been spent, they had no way to prove that people’s lives had actually improved.

Steps taken to date include:

• We are in communication with researchers who have been developing and field testing for three years a holistic measurement protocol that is used by villagers themselves to set priorities and measure progress.

• In Bangladesh, Karen Herman, an experienced researcher and a Charter Investor, has recently completed a two-week mission to document how our mobilization process unfolds in that country. As has always been the case, we expect that the experience we gain in each country will be useful for our work everywhere.

The results of these inquiries will also be a major topic of discussion in Accra.

Priority #3: Expanding our programs

To catalyze the end of hunger worldwide, we need to expand into more areas of the world. In 1998, we must strengthen the expansion we’ve already begun in Western Africa and Latin America. We will consolidate and deepen the impact of our work in India and Bangladesh, networking with government and other agencies to expand the impact of this work. In addition, we will lay groundwork for our future programs in Pakistan (the country with the second largest number of hungry people, after India) and Southern and East Africa.

While this work is described in detail in the attached reports, let me point out several major accomplishments so far this year:

• Senegal: We have hired a new, dynamic and influential country director, Aboubakar Kourouma, and re-organized the national council under the leadership of Baba Diom, general coordinator of the Conference of Ministers of Agriculture of West and Central Africa.
• As you read this, Benin and Burkina Faso are holding their first National Strategy Design Meetings. Recently, the Minister of Planning of Benin has announced that the first village where we have applied the Strategic Planning-in-Action (SPIA) methodology is now officially the pilot village for the government’s rural development strategy.
• In Bangladesh, the opening for partnership with government created by our meetings with the Prime Minister continue to accelerate our expansion. Upon the recommendation of the Prime Minister, the Deputy Commissioners of two more districts, Madaripur and Gopalganj, have hosted animator trainings in their districts, as the first step in district-wide mobilization campaigns for improved health, education and better incomes throughout their districts.
• A delegation including Lalita Banavali, Dr. John Coonrod, Prof. Badiul Majumdar and Dr. Vijay Vyas, the chair of our council in Rajasthan, made its first groundwork trip to Pakistan in February. The team held 20 meetings across 6 days, meeting key leaders in UN agencies, academia, grassroots organizations and government in order to understand the current climate for the work of ending hunger in Pakistan.

Priority #4: Expanding investment:

As you will see in the accompanying reports, 1997 was our fourth straight year of solid growth in contributions. It was also the first year in which the total number of donors has grown, with far more new investors coming into The Hunger Project than were lost.

Building on the strength of four years of solid income growth from our core committed constituency, we are now strong enough to take a leap forward through a diversity of programs for financial investment. As we continue to expand our team of individual investors, we will reach out to small businesses and large corporations and will empower more women to direct their resources to the issue that affects women the most.

Major steps for this strategy include:

• The hiring of Sylvan Dove as our new director of development, a highly experienced individual with nearly 30 years of experience in such organizations as the Legal Defense Fund, the US Committee for Unicef and the South Africa Free Election Campaign. Sylvan has particular experience with fund-raising from major corporations, and is working with members of the Funding Committee of the Board to establish a Corporate Council of corporate leaders, whose companies are contributing and inviting others to contribute.
• The launching of the Small Business Investment Group. Small businesses are the engine of growth in the United States as well as other economies, yet they are rarely approached for contributions. During 1997, a pilot project demonstrated that there is a powerful "fit" between the entrepreneurial spirit of small business owners and the strategic, empowering work of The Hunger Project. A campaign has been launched to enlist at least 100 small businesses in investing $5,000 or more per year.
• The Women’s Initiative is proving to be a powerful opportunity for increased investment in The Hunger Project. While women officially own much of the wealth in developed countries, they often have deferred to men and not laid claim to their own money. In confronting the conditions of their sisters in developing countries, more women are beginning to take responsibility for their financial resources, and direct it to the issue that affects women most.
• Our largest ever delegation of investors has been mobilized to travel to Ghana to see our work first hand and attend our historic first-ever meeting of the Global Board of Directors on the African Continent