The Hunger project uses a bottom up approach to fight hunger in Africa, South Asia, and South America.  Their 3 main pillars are: mobilizing villages to be self-reliant, empowering women as key change agents, and forging effective partnerships with local government. What does that mean?  Well I visited their headquarters and in speaking with the organization, found these initiatives to be incredibly interesting:

Key Initatives:

•   Epicenter Strategy.   THP has built 105 epicenters.  These community centers run microfinance programs, generate income, and build classrooms, store food, provide health services, and more. Of those, 19 epicenters require no further ongoing financial assistance from THP, which is achieved after about 5 years. Their unique approach places the burden on locals to formulate and carryout a plan, and their ownership of the process drives the program’s success.  The cost effective execution means THP spends $5-$15 USD per year per villager, for example, in Uganda.   THP does not pay for anything the gov’t can and should provide, but staff work with gov’t to secure ongoing delivery of services.  

• Training elected women.  71,000 elected women representatives in India have been trained by THP and local partner organizations, and these women are speaking out to bring water, health and education to their villages. When women, who have traditionally been denied a voice in decision-making, come to power, they transform the development agenda- focusing on health, nutrition, education, water, sanitation and better family income. They also tackle long-ignored problems such as domestic violence, alcoholism and corruption.

 Other programs range from running HIV/AIDS and gender inequality workshops, empowering girls in Bangladesh, to fostering government accountability.   

Impact: 

• Highlights
• Excerpts from an independent study on THP’s epicenter strategy in Uganda : “THP appears to have cracked the code on making meaningful, sustainable change.  Through case studies of three self-reliant epicenters, it is possible to see that in each case, the epicenter community has managed continued growth on several key dimensions with a clear line of sight to the stabilization of food supplies, generation of income, and expansion of the community.Through interviews, active members of the community have increased their income by an estimated 30-50%.  The other important underlying principle is an insistence that community members must contribute financially and in kind (labor), to their own development. THP does not give handouts. This design principle is a powerful tool for completely circumventing the real risk of creating welfare-dependency. Within self-funded epicenters, there is evidence of significant local ability to execute the program without THP’s support; for example: Running VCAs(workshops), developing workplans, implementing new projects and approaching local government for support.”

They are a top rated charity (by Charity Navigator), accredited by the BBB and the American institute of philanthropy.  80% of donations go directly to program expenses.  

Please let me know if you have any questions.  thanks