APRIL 2004

President’s Report – Our Expansion Has Begun

Executive Summary
Since our last board meeting in October, The Hunger Project completed a very successful year in fundraising – success that has put us in position for 2004 to be a year for the most exciting expansion in our programs in nearly a decade.
Click below for country reports from Bangladesh, Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ghana, India, Malawi, Mexico, Peru, Senegal, Uganda and the AWFFI program including Mozambique.

We completed 2003 with a level of sustainable funding up 19% over 2002. Our 2004 US fundraising as of this date is 21% ahead of where we stood at the same time in 2003. Based on this success, we have planned a 20% increase in the program budget for each existing country program, plus sufficient funds for new programs.

The 2003 program budget was increased over 2002 by 11%. Even this modest increase resulted in significant expansion of our programs.

Based on these budgetary expansions, our programs have begun the process of empowering far greater numbers of hungry people to build lives of self-reliance and dignity. This year, we will extend our catalytic strategies for the end of hunger to more villages and – for the first time since 1999 – into an additional country: Ethiopia. In these countries, The Hunger Project will empower far more leaders to step forward for transforming the conditions that hold hunger in place.

In addition, we have taken the initial steps in developing a new initiative to influence international development policies consistent with what our experience on the ground has taught us as being absolutely critical to the work of ending hunger.

What have we learned?

As we expand our programs and confront the challenge (and, frankly, the moral imperative) of influencing policies well beyond the reach of our direct programs, it is useful to take stock of several of the fundamental lessons we have learned on the ground.

As we have begun engaging with policy makers, it has been shocking to observe the degree to which these lessons – most of which are now second nature to us in The Hunger Project – have not been incorporated to any meaningful degree in official development policies.

For example, six important lessons are that:

  1. Hunger is not a food issue. People are hungry because they lack the opportunity – or are systematically denied the opportunity – to end their own hunger.
  2. Relief programs – when they displace long-term development – can be counterproductive, as they undermine local self-reliance.
  3. Hungry people are not “beneficiaries.” They are the principal actors and authors for their own development.
  4. Decentralization and local democracy are critical to making government services more accessible, better in quality and accountable to local people.
  5. Overcoming gender discrimination is not merely important, it is fundamental. Gender discrimination is the primary root cause of most of the world’s remaining hunger.
  6. Women must not be treated merely as a “vulnerable group” but as individuals who carry the greatest responsibility – who do most of the work – and therefore must have a primary voice in decision making if actions to end hunger are to be effective.

Our emerging strategy for influencing development policy circles is to position ourselves in a leadership position where we can cause a fundamental reexamination of the assumptions underlying current development programs, and call for new thinking based on these six basic lessons.

Since our last meeting, we have retained the counsel of a highly-experienced policy advisor in Washington who is working with us to begin implementing this strategy. As this is an election year in the United States, it would be naïve to expect significant breakthroughs in 2004. What we can hope to achieve this year is the kind of positioning we would need to make greater progress next year.

Progress in Increasing Our Sustainable Funding

As you know, 2003 was the Year of the Investor – a year that we focused on the vital role individual investors can play in this moment in the history of The Hunger Project. In short – each small increase in sustainable funding produces a large increase in the work of ending hunger.

Building on a new strategic framework for fundraising we established in 2002, The Hunger Project committed itself to achieving significant growth in sustainable fundraising in order to permit it to expand its programs for the end of hunger.

Not including the one-time, $1 million raised from the sale of the Raul Julia Ending Hunger House that was realized in two equal portions across 2002 and 2003 and a large one-time gift from a Swedish investor, Hunger Project fundraising grew by 19% in 2003. This included $5.8 million raised in the United States and $1.5 million transferred for global programs from Hunger Project partner countries in Canada, Europe and the Pacific Rim.

A new initiative – Women and Philanthropy – began in 2002 and became a major catalyst for financial expansion in 2003. Women in the developed world are laying claim to their money, and investing it consistent with their commitment. The initiative set an initial goal of $1 million – surpassed it – and completed the year having raised over $1.3 million.

We have sustained this momentum into 2004 – holding meetings early in the year with our fundraising leadership from localities across the US as well as with our partner countries. While we can reliably project fundraising of at least $7.5 million in 2004, we have set a target of $9 million – $7 million in the U.S. and $2 million in the partner countries. This would be a 24% increase over the 2003 sustainable fundraising level.

To date, we are on track to achieve this result. As of this writing, our reliable 2004 fundraising pledges have now reached almost $4.8 million, compared with $4.2 million at this same time last year.

One of the most significant achievements to date this year is that six individual investors have pledged to underwrite our expansion into Ethiopia, with pledges totaling $300,000 per year for three years.

Expansion in Africa

In our epicenter strategy in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Malawi, Senegal and Uganda – a strategy that empowers local populations to work together to meet basic needs – we doubled our expansion rate. At the end of 2003, there were 2.6 million people mobilized through 61 epicenters and 88 sub-epicenters to improve health, education, nutrition, food production and family income.

In addition, during 2003, we implemented the first-ever grassroots level training on HIV/AIDS and Gender Inequality, and enabled more than 100,000 villagers to take this workshop.

Only half of the 61 epicenter regions we’ve mobilized for self-reliance have been able to fully construct their facilities for health, education, nutrition, rural banking and improved crop production. This year, we expect to double the rate at which the facilities can be constructed, from at best six per year, to 12-18 per year.

In 2003, we increased the total number of micro-loans for women food farmers granted to date through the African Woman Food Farmer Initiative (AWFFI) to 40,110, with a cumulative total of $1,838,262. There was also a significant reorganization during 2003, which should make possible a 40% expansion in the rate of issuing new loans in 2004.

Expansion into Ethiopia: Now that it is at peace, and at the invitation of its Prime Minister, The Hunger Project will expand this year into the country whose name is synonymous with hunger. A great strategic asset is that Dr. Fitigu Tadesse, who heads our Africa programs, is a former Ethiopian diplomat who continues to be highly respected. This is a very significant expansion: Ethiopia’s population is nearly equal to the total of our current six epicenter countries.

Deepening our expansion in India

During 2003, we carried out a very strong program in five states to empower elected grassroots women leaders as key change agents for the end of hunger, and began the process in seven additional states. In total, more than 6,400 women leaders took our Women’s Leadership Workshop, of whom 4,000 were elected representatives and the rest were leaders of local women’s groups.

During 2004, we intend to “fill out” the seven new state programs to be as comprehensive and impactful as the first five, and begin activities in two more states. As importantly (and this is always true for The Hunger Project), we will go “deeper” in order to ensure that our expansion is true to our principles and strategy. Some of the initiatives to achieve this in 2004 include:

Bangladesh: Empowering women and strengthening local democracy

Our strategy in Bangladesh is similar to that in India – to empower women as key change agents in local democracy. In Bangladesh, however, we need to strengthen the entire institution of local democracy, and demonstrate its importance.

In 2001, we launched a 10-point “women-centered, Union Parishad (UP) based-strategy” in 100 UPs – clusters of villages with approximately 20,000 people. We began 2003 with 209 unions involved in the strategy, and are now starting 2004 with 304.

Once again, The Hunger Project dramatically increased its number of trained grassroots animators. During 2003, more than 15,000 were trained, bringing the total to 35,000. More than 10,000 of these animators attended our annual Animator Reunion in December.

Alongside the grassroots mobilization strategy, The Hunger Project has established two national-level advocacy alliances – the “UP Self-Government Advocacy Group” made up of elected local leaders themselves – and “Citizens for Fair Elections” made up of top-level elite who are committed to effective local government and women’s full participation. Following the 2003 local elections, “Citizens for Fair Elections” changed its name and role to “Citizens for Good Governance” (with the Bangla acronym SHUJAN which also means “good people.”)

A key objective for 2004 is to train as many newly-elected local officials as possible, utilizing The Hunger Project’s intensive 4-day animator training. Training elected officials is more expensive than training village-level volunteers, as it must be done in a residential facility away from the demands of daily work, yet the investment is worth it as the actions of these individuals directly affect thousands.

Latin America: Empowering indigenous women in local democracy

Our strategic priorities everywhere in the world – the empowerment of women, and the empowerment of grassroots people to meet their basic needs through local democracy – is at the center of all our work in Latin America, and this work is increasingly focused on the most marginalized sectors of the population – the indigenous peoples.

At the Board Meeting in Los Angeles, we will have the opportunity of putting a special focus on our work in Latin America, as we will be joined by our leadership from Mexico, Bolivia and Peru.

In early August, at the strong invitation of our Mexico team, I plan to travel to Mexico to meet with the key leadership of our three country programs, to discover what’s next for The Hunger Project in Latin America.

Some of the priorities for this year already include:

Fall Event Plans

Since 1999, we have alternated years for our fall events between the Africa Prize and another special focus. In 2004, our focus will be The Girl Child – the Future Depends on Her.

Our event will be at the New York Hilton Hotel on Saturday night, November 6, followed – as always – by our Board meeting on November 7. The creative work on this initiative has just begun, and I look forward to informing you about this as it unfolds.