What does The Hunger Project do?
The Hunger Project is a global non-profit organization that carries out its mission of ending hunger in Africa, South Asia, and Latin America through three essential activities: mobilizing village clusters at the grassroots level to build self-reliance, empowering women as key change agents, and forging effective partnerships with local government.
What do you mean by hunger?
The Hunger Project focuses on chronic, persistent hunger as distinct from the acute famine emergencies that make the news. Less than 10 percent the world's undernourished people are hungry because of famine (FAO 2006).
Chronic, persistent hunger is not due merely to lack of food. It occurs when people lack opportunity to earn enough income, to be educated and gain skills, to meet basic health needs and have a voice in the decisions that affect their community.
Why don't you distribute food to hungry people?
The Hunger Project does not distribute food because food aid is not a sustainable solution to world hunger.
Although there are emergency situations in which food aid is the difference between life and death, more than 90 percent of the world's hungry people are chronically undernourished (FAO 2006). For them, hunger is a daily, sometimes life-long, reality. People living with persistent hunger require and deserve a sustainable solution based on self-reliance.
Food aid is not only insufficient for combating world hunger, some development experts argue that it can actually cause harm. If poorly managed, distribution of food can destabilize local prices and undermine local production and trade, which are critical for local agricultural development and long-term food security.
The Hunger Project addresses the root causes of hunger and poverty using a methodology that is affordable, replicable and sustainable. Our methodology emphasizes rural development and self-reliance. It enables women and men to eradicate persistent hunger in their communities, and makes them more resilient so that they can cope with famine or other emergencies as they arise.
With all the problems here at home, why should I be concerned with hunger overseas?
The problems we face, both at home and internationally, are increasingly global. Issues such as global warming, environment, disease, war and political instability are issues that ignore borders and affect us all.
In addition, The Hunger Project is committed to ending world hunger as an expression of global citizenship, global partnership and global responsibility. We consider that hunger exists not as a local or national problem, but as a global problem. All of us have a responsibility to create a world where all people have the chance to lead lives free from hunger.
[www.thp.org]
