APRIL 2003
President's Report to the Annual Meeting: "On Track for Expansion"
To: Members of the Global Board of Directors
From: Joan Holmes
Executive Summary
In the period since my last report in October, The Hunger Project completed a very challenging financial year and launched a year in which we will empower many more people to achieve the sustainable end of hunger.
In both programs and fund-raising, Hunger Project staff and activists rose to the challenge of 2002 - a year in which setbacks in the economy hit many people, and most nonprofits, very hard. We redesigned and expanded our fundraising activities appropriate to expanding our funding even during a “down” economy.
We sustained our vital strategic programs within a constrained budget without losing ground, or our spirit. In Asia, Africa and Latin America, during 2002, The Hunger Project provided millions of hungry people with new opportunities for lives of self-reliance. We are poised to have an even greater impact in 2003.
A broad-based, sustainable program of financial investment
In October, I reported on the background of the financial setbacks we faced early last year that led to my decision to personally take charge of fundraising last June. In reviewing our year-end results, we can identify several major areas of progress that will provide a foundation for our financial future.
- We now work within a systematic, strategic framework through which we ensure that we give every investor the opportunity to renew, sustain and increase their level of investment. Within this framework, the priority in the first five months of 2003 is a campaign to renew and upgrade all recent investors.
- We have an expanded team of staff fundraisers and administrators who are becoming more skilled at working within this strategic framework. In February, this team was further expanded when Jim Goodman, a long-time volunteer and a senior corporate lawyer from Philadelphia, joined our staff.
- We have in place the information system to support this strategy. In February, we added additional procedures to this system to improve our monthly investor communications to better facilitate timely payments and renewals.
- We mobilized volunteer leadership across dozens of localities across the US and around the world. Eighty of these volunteer leaders met together in New York in January to launch the year, and many have held local “workdays” to galvanize their teams back home.
- We renewed, deepened and revitalized our investor movement, particularly in the US where we held more than 100 public investor gatherings during 2002 - up from 12 in 2001.
A few indicators of the success of this strategy to date include:
- Improved renewals:
A new thrust for 2003 is Women and Philanthropy. During February, events were held in New York and Silicon Valley to provide women in The Hunger Project the opportunity to explore what philanthropy means in their lives and to the end of hunger.
The Hunger Project has been tremendously blessed this year with a special one-time gift of $1 million in January made possible through the sale of the Raul Julia Ending Hunger Home - a luxury home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, built by a team headed by long-time high-level investors Tracie and Dave Jansen. This extraordinary initiative put real wind in our sails as we launched the year. At the same time - given our commitment to build an expanded sustainable level of Hunger Project funding - we are not “counting” this money within our fundraising campaign.
Restoring budget cuts to our programs
When we launched 2002, it was clear that our programs in the developing world were out in front of the resources to fund them. The launching of the African Woman Food Farmer Initiative in 1999 and the South Asia Initiative in 2000 - and the success of both these programs - created the demand for more funding to extend these programs to more villages, districts and states.
In addition, during 2002 we had planned to implement our new “HIV/AIDS and Gender Inequality” Initiative in 7 African countries that we had developed earlier in the year.
Our initial budget for 2002 was $7.2 million, and very early on in the year, in close consultation with the Audit and Finance Committee, we cut it back - ending the year with a total expenditure of $6.2 million. Our first priority was to cut non-program expenses, however this level of budget reduction required significant reduction in program budgets as well. We delayed planned expansion of our programs in India, Bangladesh and Africa as well as the implementation of the HIV/AIDS campaign.
This year, we are confident that we can restore the budget to $7.1. As you will see in the details of the attached reports, this 15% budget increase will dramatically increase the number of people we can mobilize - in many cases doubling the impact. This is possible because (a) our work is catalytic and high leverage, and (b) we already have in place the strategies, leadership, experienced staff, networks of partnerships, and the credibility to do so.
Strategic Focus - women and local democracy
As important as it is that we directly empower increasing numbers of people to end their own hunger, our mission demands more. Ending hunger requires the transformation of the conditions that give rise to hunger. The most important of these are the severe subjugation of women and poor people’s lack of a voice in the decisions that affect their lives.
Ending hunger requires effective, sustainable local democratic structures through which people can meet their basic human needs. The Hunger Project works in partnership with local people to ensure that decentralized democratic structures fully integrate the leadership of women, are directly accountable to the people, and have the resources, information and decision-making power they need to get the job done.
Our 2003 program objectives in South Asia
Our strategy in both India and Bangladesh is to seize the opportunity provided by new laws that guarantee that 1/3 of all seats in elected local government be reserved for women. In both countries, we train grassroots women leaders to be effective change agents for the end of hunger, and carry out initiatives to create an environment in which they can succeed.
The obstacles in the environment are daunting. Corruption, violence, feudalism, bureaucratic and political obstructionism are rampant. Yet in the face of this, thousands of courageous grassroots women leaders are stepping forward - banding together - and achieving solid progress for the well-being of their villages.
In India, we are now recognized as the nationwide organization working to empower women to be effective leaders in panchayats, or village councils. In 2003, we will train thousands more grassroots women elected to panchayats. We will expand this campaign from the current four states to more than 12 - enlisting the partnership of more and more local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). We will provide women with networks of support, and training in finance, law and communication skills. We will also train adolescent girls as the future generation of leadership. To shape public opinion in support of women’s leadership in panchayats, we will further expand the influence of the Sarojini Naidu Prize for Best Reporting on Women and Panchayati Raj, and provide training to journalists, editors and journalism students.
In Bangladesh, we have catalyzed a national coalition fighting for stronger local democracy. During the past two months, local-level elections have been held across the country, presenting a strategic opportunity which we have seized. In the run-up to the elections, The Hunger Project mobilized a campaign to press for fair elections, and bring candidates face-to-face with the people. Following the elections, The Hunger Project’s strategy is to train as many newly-elected leaders as possible.
In 2003, we will double the number of local areas in Bangladesh in which we carry out our 10-point program, through which we demonstrate that local democracy can succeed and make dramatic progress towards 100 percent school enrollment of both girls and boys, 100 percent sanitation and 100 percent literacy - by mobilizing the people. In each area, to mobilize the people we train local leadership and a critical mass of at least 100 volunteer animators, half of whom are women. To transform the societal attitudes that subjugate women - beginning when they are young girls - we will again mobilize a countrywide campaign, involving schools, NGOs, government departments and civil society, to celebrate the Fourth Annual National Girl Child Day on September 30th.
Our 2003 program objectives in Africa
In Africa, there are four major conditions that must be addressed: leadership, increased agriculture production, the lack of investment in people, and HIV/AIDS. The Hunger Project currently works in 7 countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal, and Uganda to empower people to transform these conditions.
Through our epicenter strategy, hundreds of thousands of people are now gaining access to food security, health, education and better income. Epicenters are so-named because they are the center of our grassroots mobilization for self-reliance. In 2003, we will double the rate by which we expand the number of epicenters - building 18 new epicenters (up from 9 in 2002), bringing the total number of epicenters to 61 in 2003. We ended 2002 with 43 epicenters and 81 “sub-epicenters” - smaller buildings, a day’s journey from the epicenter, to extend the reach of its programs.
Partnership with local government is central to this strategy - when people are organized in epicenters, they become effective in having government provide them with teachers, health workers and agricultural trainers. The epicenters also influence local development policy. Recently, for example, in the Mpigi district of Uganda, the district government was so impressed with our epicenter’s food security strategy that it is requiring all sub-counties in the district to create similar programs.
The “AIDS and Gender Inequality” Campaign is currently being launched in all 7 countries where we work. As it is focused at the grassroots level, our “AIDS and Gender Inequality” workshop has been translated into local languages. It will first be delivered to large “general assemblies” of approximately 200 key stakeholders at each epicenter - including government workers, animators, epicenter committee members and others. Specialized animators will then be trained to take the workshop to surrounding villages.
The African Woman Food Farmer Initiative will reach more women farmers this year, providing them access to credit, savings and training: 10,000 women will obtain loans this year compared to 6.300 women in 2002. Some of these women have become so visible through their Hunger Project training that they have won local elections.
Our 2003 program objectives in Latin America
In Latin America, we will continue to expand the mobilization for self-reliance in Mexico and Bolivia, and we will launch a new initiative in Peru. These programs - as in all our programs - focus on gender equality and strengthening the voice of marginalized people in local government.
The priority in all three countries is the empowerment of the indigenous population, as they are the poorest and most marginalized.
In Bolivia, we continue to work in partnership with Radio ACLO to empower 1/2 million Quechua-speaking people in the Andes with training in health, education, agriculture and how to work effectively with government. We mobilized indigenous people to participate in the 2002 national elections - securing the first-ever indigenous representation in Bolivia’s senate. This year, we’re preparing people to play a significant role in the 2004 local elections.
In Mexico, The Hunger Project has trained more than 1,000 animators and 200 advanced animators known as “catalysts” to mobilize people in 10 states for self-reliance. During 2003, we are decentralizing the training and empowerment process into three regions. The Mexican government has honored one of our community literacy campaigns as the best in the nation, and, as a result, provided the community with more classrooms in order to expand its reach.
In Peru, we have successfully completed our five-year partnership with DESCO in an initiative to rebuild villages destroyed by fighting in the Central Amazon. This project is now being expanded with larger-scale international funding and our role as “catalyst” is now complete. Peru is now one year into a transition to decentralized, local democracy. John Coonrod and Jenny Perlman recently completed meetings with Peru’s First Lady and key leaders in Peru’s highly organized civil society to identify our next strategic step. We are currently in conversations to establish a partnership with Chirapaq - the only nation-wide organization in Peru that is working with indigenous women on issues of gender and participation in local democracy. The leadership of Chirapaq have expressed an eager willingness to work as full members of The Hunger Project family.
Looking beyond 2003 - the case for greater funding
Our mission - the sustainable end of world hunger - demands that we extend the process of mobilization and empowerment to millions more people, as strategically as we can.
In 2001, when we first looked strategically at the next expansion of our programs, it was clear that there are at least two major thresholds we must reach in expanding our sustainable funding.
- Level One:
Not all increases in revenue can go immediately into program expansion, as we must continue to increase the size of our operating reserve to be consistent with expanded levels of operations. Last year’s experience validated the profound importance of a solid operating reserve.
It’s important to know that the expansion of our programs is non-linear. There are multiplier effects.
- For example, it takes far more courage - and more work by The Hunger Project to enroll the first women panchayat leaders in an area to take the Women's Leadership Workshop. What next happens is that these women enroll the other women members of their panchayats to take the workshop, and the whole process becomes more effective and less costly.
- When more panchayat women have taken the workshop it becomes easier for them to succeed. As their visibility grows, more doors open for them with government - they can get more schools built, more wells dug, have electricity brought to their villages, and more children in school.
- As we reach certain thresholds in the number of animator trainings in Bangladesh, they become less expensive. When we first began, people needed to travel to the capital, and it cost approximately $50 per person. Now we have so many trainers that we can hold the trainings at the village level, and the cost is reduced to approximately $5 per person.
- When we reach a critical mass of animators in a village, the whole spirit of The Hunger Project takes hold. Local government becomes more responsive to the people, corruption is reduced, the council starts holding budget meetings in public.
- As more and more epicenters are built in Africa, they gain more respect and visibility - and attract greater local contributions. If it cost us $80,000 to mobilize to build one epicenter five years ago, the cost today is roughly $30,000.
Our influence within countries increases as the visibility of our programs increase. For example, in Africa, we are seen as the organization committed to women food farmers. In India, we are the leading organization training women in the panchayats. In Bangladesh, we are the organization calling for reform of local democracy.
When government calls meetings on these topics, we are there. When the press covers these topics, they come to us. When we see the need to build an alliance of dozens of organizations, we’re in a position to do so.
This year - 2003 - is shaping up to be a breakthrough year, offering enormous opportunities to accelerate the process of ending world hunger. We intend to seize every opportunity to expand our level of sustainable funding to make it possible for us to seize those opportunities.