SEPTEMBER 17, 2001

Report to the Global Board of Directors

Joan Holmes, President

Since beginning this report, the world has been unalterably changed by the brutal terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. Many of us in New York and around the world have lost loved ones, and all of us in the US and around the world have felt the disruption to our sense of security. In the face of this, Hunger Project supporters and activists have renewed their stand for our global human family, and have found the courage to reach out and communicate the fundamental importance of The Hunger Project’s work. It is these individuals you will have the opportunity to be with on October 13 and 14 – and I know that they are looking forward to being with you.

Executive Summary

In the past six months, our global movement has made significant progress in implementing on the ground the initiatives designed to make a catalytic difference in the era of the "Final Milestone" for the end of hunger. At the same time – and as is always the case given the strategic design of The Hunger Project – the outlines of "what’s next" have begun to emerge.

• Our South Asia Initiative – to empower grassroots women leaders as key change agents within local democratic structures – is training women leaders and is building a coalition of organizations to support women and local democracy in both India and Bangladesh. By the time of our board meeting, we will have honored the first recipients of our new Sarojini Naidu Prize for Best Reporting on Women and Panchayati Raj. National elections in Bangladesh forced the rescheduling of the second annual National Girl Child Day to October 22nd.
• Our African Woman Food Farmer Initiative – which expanded into Eastern and Southern Africa just before our last board meeting – is now operational in those areas as well as in West Africa. Its impact has been validated by investments and other official recognition from African governments. Our "torch events" were held in Malawi, and preparations are underway for the torch to be passed to the last of our eight countries – Mozambique - in December.
• Our Strategic Planning-in-Action campaigns – that mobilize people for self-reliance in 11 countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America – are now in the process of being reshaped to be more fully integrated with our new initiatives.
• Our Mexico team recently met in New York to review the outstanding achievements of the past two years, and to create the next strategic focus.
• It has been in the process of creating this year’s Africa Prize for Leadership that we’ve begun to discover new areas that must be addressed, particularly with regards to men and gender, that are critical both for stopping the spread of AIDS and for achieving the sustainable end of hunger.
• Financially, despite setbacks for many of our investors in the faltering economy, The Hunger Project has continued to gain strength. Expenses are being carefully controlled within our expanded programs, and income in the first half of 2001 was our best ever. We are significantly ahead of where we were last year in terms of overall commitments for the year, and are looking forward to the October events to give us a powerful foundation for 2002.

Women and Local Democracy in South Asia

The two interlocked priorities of all our work in the era of the "final milestone" are to catalyze a profound transformation in gender relations, and to strengthen local democracy as an effective society-wide capacity for achieving the sustainable end of hunger.

In both India and Bangladesh, we launched four-prong strategies last year to address these interlinked issues. During the past six months, both countries have made significant progress in implementing these programs on the ground.

In India, the centerpiece of our strategy is the Women’s Leadership Workshop. This three-day training provides women elected local representatives – many of whom are illiterate and have never before been outside their household – with confidence, understanding, skills and the network of support they will need to achieve progress in their villages.

This thrust of the strategy is linked to the creation of statewide alliances for advocacy and action, made up of organizations who stand in support of these elected women leaders. Already, three "trainings of trainers" have been held to train the best women trainers of dozens of grassroots organizations to lead the workshop. The first 11 workshops have been led by teams of these trainers, with 400 women participants.

The third thrust is with the media, who must create a climate of public support. On October 2nd, the first annual Sarojini Naidu Prize for Best Reporting on Women and Panchayati Raj will be awarded at a major ceremony in New Delhi. An international delegation of Hunger Project investors will travel to these events and witness the impact of the Women’s Leadership workshop.

In Bangladesh, The Hunger Project has created a 10-point strategy to work directly with local governments – and particularly with women in local governments – to demonstrate the effectiveness of strengthening local democracy. A new initiative has been launched in partnership with a coalition of organizations to secure passage of a new, stronger, local government law following the upcoming national elections on October 1st. The Hunger Project is playing a leading role in researching and drafting that proposed new law.

A large coalition of organizations has worked throughout the year to ensure that the second annual National Girl Child Day is even more impactful than last year. Although originally scheduled for September 30th, the government has postponed it until October 22nd because of the October 1st national election.

The African Woman Food Farmer Initiative

Our African Woman Food Farmer Initiative has now been launched in 8 African countries and continues to reach more and more women with training and credit.

The advocacy thrust of our initiative continues to mobilize tens of thousands of people in support of African Women Food Farmers through massive public events as the Africa Prize statue – like the Olympic Torch – moves from country to country and village to village. The most recent round of Torch events was in Malawi – the seventh country to receive the torch. Once again, the events were attended by an international delegation of Hunger Project investors, and generated tremendous media coverage. At one of the rural Malawi events, more than 18,000 people attended the rally with the President and First Lady.

The final scheduled series of Torch Events will be held in Mozambique in early December.

Strategic Planning-in-Action (SPIA)

As our new initiatives are taking hold, the momentum of our campaigns to mobilize people for self-reliance has continued to grow. Creating synergy between our existing SPIA mobilization and our new initiatives is now an intentional strategy in both Africa and South Asia.

• In Africa: as you will see in his reports, our regional director, Dr. Fitigu Tadesse, has visited five of our six African SPIA countries since our last board meeting. He personally visited many of the new "epicenters" – the multipurpose centers from which mobilization emanates. One striking program that some of our countries have recently launched from the epicenters is the production of nutritional supplements from locally grown materials. These are used in the epicenter schools, and are also sold to surrounding villages.

• In Bangladesh: Our entire mobilization program is now focused on strengthening local democracy – and women’s leadership within that democracy. On a target of working with 100 "unions parishad" (the democratic unit for a cluster of 15 villages) this year, we are already working with 70. A key milestone during this period has been our first success in having a union parishad create a strategic plan and a budget with full participation of the people. Our full 10-point strategy for empowering the union parishad is now operational in 21 of the 70 unions.
• In India: Two key steps have taken place recently across our state strategies in India. One is that we have now hired strong, professional staff coordinators in 9 of our 11 states who are skilled and experienced in grassroots action to empower women in local democracy. The second is that we have held workshops with many of our state council members and local NGO partners in the states to have them fully understand and take on the commitment to achieving the end of hunger through the empowerment of women in local democracy.

• In Latin America: When we were last together in San Francisco in April, I committed to our Mexico country director Dr. Hugo Gonzalez that we would hold meetings in the Global Office with the Mexico team. These meetings were designed to look strategically at how to make our program in Mexico more potent, and how to have them experienced more powerfully throughout our global movement. I’m pleased to report that these meetings were held in late July, and were very successful. Our team in the Global Office had the opportunity to come to a much better understanding of The Hunger Project’s highly successful program to date, as well as a deeper understanding of the larger social and historic context of poverty in rural Mexico. Through July of this year, with a very modest budget, The Hunger Project-Mexico has mobilized more than 67,000 families in 133 distinct local areas (municipios).

The Africa Prize – 2001

As you know, our upcoming board meeting will follow the gala 14th Africa Prize for Leadership, which this year is honoring the courageous women and men at the frontlines of the struggle to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa.

As you will see in the reports, the jury has chosen outstanding laureates in four categories of action:

• An individual woman who is infected with HIV and who has demonstrated the courage to speak out publicly on this issue.
• A leader from the religious community who has used his/her exalted moral position to break the silence on HIV/AIDS and to educate the public on how to prevent it.
• An institution of public health and/or public policy which has taken bold and effective action to halt the spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
• A men’s organization committed to examine and transform the traditional definitions of masculinity that encourage risky sexual behavior, which drives the spread of this epidemic.

The fourth category was added in the wake of the UN General Assembly Special Session on AIDS at the end of June. There, it was glaringly obvious that men’s sexual behavior was driving this disease, yet very little had been done to empower men to understand, confront and alter the traditional social conditioning that led to this behavior. We investigated this quickly and in depth, and found that – indeed – there were a number of pioneering groups in Southern Africa that were working to organize men for this purpose, often with significant international support.

In my studies on this issue, I have concluded that men are as trapped in their gender roles as women are, and need to become effective agents of change for transforming gender roles. This obviously has enormous implications for all of our programs that focus on transforming gender relations as a key step for the sustainable end of hunger.

Financial Strength

Despite the dramatic downturn in the economy and its impact on many of our investors, The Hunger Project has continued to increase its financial strength. Obviously, we will need to carefully monitor the ongoing economic impact of the tragic attacks of September 11th.

Our increased financial strength has been achieved both through very careful stewardship of our expenses, and through sustained efforts by our movement of volunteer and staff fundraisers. Together, these have resulted in 2001 being our best first half year in more than a decade.

Some of the important accomplishments include:

• Legacy Investment: In July, Steve Sherwood became our first "paid-in-full" Legacy Investor, giving more than US$1 million within one year. To ensure that the possible "windfall" of Legacy Investment is used to fund sustainable programs, we have put in place special planning and administrative procedures to ensure that our pool of Legacy Funds are spent over a three-to-four year time frame.
• Commitments for 2001: Throughout 2001, the fundraising team has ensured that our total commitments for this year exceed the levels of the similar time last year and are on track to meeting the $8 million baseline cash budget for this year, including within that baseline only $500,000 of Legacy funds.
• "Stakeholder" strategy: In doing the work of filling this year’s Africa Prize, our investor movement has taken far more care in preparing guests to understand The Hunger Project – what it stands for – and the importance of being a real "stakeholder" in the process through financial investment. Based on this strategy, the fundraising teams are planning to have the fundraising at this year’s event be even more effective than our successes over the past three years.

Plans for our 25th Anniversary – Empowering Our Future

As always, immediately following the board meeting there will be a Global Leadership meeting with our investors, activists, staff and supporters from around the world. At this meeting, I will be announcing our plans for our 25th anniversary.

As I shared with the Board in April, we are designing the 25th anniversary to be very different than anything we’ve done before. We have no interest in celebrating the past – our focus will be on empowering our future. We are designing a way of marking this occasion in ways that will directly empower the work of The Hunger Project all around the world.

Our 25th anniversary year will not only empower our work through inspiring events, but through a deeper and more widely held understanding of the fundamental nature of The Hunger Project. During this year, our movement and those around us will gain a deeper understanding of who we must be and what we must do to transform the social conditions that give rise to hunger, to the spread of AIDS and – frankly – to terrorism.

Our mandate is, and continues to be, the end of hunger. And in addressing ourselves to the social conditions that give rise to hunger, we are working in ways that are catalytic for a far better future for all humanity.