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The Hunger Project

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The Hunger Project (THP) describes itself as a global non-profit organization committed to the sustainable end of world hunger. In thirteen countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the organization implements programs that mobilize rural grassroots communities to achieve sustainable progress in health, education, nutrition and family income. The Hunger Project has received a great deal of positive recognition, and has received recognition for its innovations in gender and development.

Contents

Current activities

Objectives

In each region of the developing world The Hunger Project's programs apply principles of self-reliance, gender-equality, local leadership and local democracy to overcome root issues of hunger and poverty.

Primary activities

In Africa (in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal and Uganda) The Hunger Project carries out what it calls its "epicenter" strategy. The Project organizes clusters of 10 to 15 villages to establish and manage their own programs for rural banking, improved agriculture, food-processing, income-generation, adult functional literacy, food-security, and primary health-care (including the prevention of HIV/AIDS). A committee of villagers (with equal representation of women and men) manages each epicenter facility. A special program of microfinance, the African Woman Food Farmer Initiative, integrates with the epicenter strategy.

In 14 states of India, working in partnership with 90 local civil-society organizations, The Hunger Project focuses on the role of women elected to local village councils. It has trained 45,000 elected women as change-agents for solving problems of education, health and nutrition in their villages. It provides women with training in social and political citizenry, local governance and village-level planning, and provides them with links to existing government programs. The hunger project organizes women into federations in order to strengthen their ability to lobby for change.

In 450 clusters of villages spread over all 64 districts of Bangladesh, The Hunger Project has trained more than 60,000 village volunteer "animators" to strengthen the institutions of local democracy and to carry out campaigns to improve food-production, incomes, sanitation, nutrition and public health.

In Latin America, where poverty especially affects rural indigenous communities, The Hunger Project works with such communities to overcome their economic marginalization - particularly that of the indigenous women. The Hunger Project implements programs in indigenous communities of Bolivia, Peru and Mexico.

Administrative and fundraising expenses, revenues

The Hunger Project receives its primary support from the private contributions of individuals in the United States, Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Japan.

Fundraising and administrative expenses as a percentage of total support and revenue amount to approximately 23.5%.[Combined Federal Campaign, Office of Personnel Management], note, Word document.; see "Global Hunger Project", item #1436 [CVC Charity Application] from Commonwealth of Virginia Campaign The Hunger Project meets all financial standards of governmental and nongovernmental agencies. Charity Navigator gives it three out of four stars, and the American Institute of Philanthropy gives it an A- rating.

According to the Combined Federal Campaign, 2004:

Under OPM regulations, if an organization’s administrative and fundraising expenses exceed 25 percent of total support and revenue, it must certify that the expenses are reasonable under the circumstances and include a formal plan to reduce such expenses below 25 percent.Combined Federal Campaign, 2004, http://www.opm.gov/cfc/04lists/2004NationalListwithout25WordStatements.doc

The Hunger project paid Joan Holmes, the project's president, US$232,010 in 2004. [The Hunger Project financial statistics] from Charity Navigator, 2004. According to Charity Navigator:

Compensation for the CEO of this charity is equal to 2.97% of this organization's total functional expenses.The Hunger Project, Charity Navigator, CEO Pay FYE 2004, % of Expenses - "Show Me.", http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/search.summary/orgid/6427.htm

History

Origins

The folksinger John Denver; Oberlin President Robert W. Fuller; and Werner Erhard, founder of Erhard Seminars Training (est), founded The Hunger Project in 1977 in close association with R. Buckminster Fuller, the environmentalist Dr. Donella Meadows, and the land-reform expert Professor [Roy Prosterman]. Joan Holmes, previously associated with Erhard Seminars Training as "consulting educational psychologist", has served as the CEO of the Hunger Project from its inception. Holmes had previously managed an independent study which later led to the book A look at est in education, written by Robert W. Fuller and Zara Wallace, January 1, 1975, est, an educational corporation.

Evolution of programs

From its inception, those who designed the Hunger Project intended not to duplicate the efforts of other organizations, but to act as a strategic organization guided by the question "What’s missing which, if provided, would enable humanity to take a leap forward in ending hunger?" 
In 1977, the National Academy of Sciences World Food and Nutrition study identified the lack of "political will" to end hunger as an important factor in the field. Based on this conclusion, The Hunger Project launched programs of education and advocacy designed to mobilize a global constituency committed to the end of hunger.


In 1979, as the world initially failed to respond to a growing famine in Cambodia, The Hunger Project participated in generating a White House conference on the crisis[[Citing sources citation needed]] and then carried out campaigns to raise funds for relief organizations. A similar campaign occurred for the Somalia famine of 1980. These conferences and campaigns revealed that hunger-response agencies lacked sufficient cooperation and coordination, and the Hunger Project launched a series of initiatives which contributed to the founding of InterAction in 1984.


As famine swept across Africa in 1983-84, The Hunger Project met with Africans across the continent to gain a clearer understanding of the root causes of the crisis, concluding that the famine fundamentally represented a failure of leadership and a failure of policy. The Hunger Project launched initiatives in both these areas, as well as a research initiative to discover ways it might make a difference on the ground in developing countries.


During this exploration, members of its board felt the lack of a comprehensive, global strategic plan; however in 1989 the board came to see top-down planning not as the solution but as part of the problem. Beginning in 1990, The Hunger Project redirected all its efforts to pioneering decentralized, multi-sectoral bottom-up approaches to development – starting in India. By 1995 the Project had commenced activities in 10 states of India, 20 districts of Bangladesh, Senegal and Ghana.


In 1996, Unicef published a study, [the Asian Enigma], demonstrating that entrenched gender-inequality not only functioned as a major factor in hunger and poverty — as The Hunger Project has long emphasized — but actually served as the primary root cause for South Asia’s high rates of child-malnutrition. This led to the creation of new interventions designed to overcome gender-inequality in each developing region. These include the [African Woman Food Farmer Initiative], the Panchayati Raj Campaign, the [AIDS and Gender Inequality Campaign] and [National Girl Child Day] and new strategies for the empowerment of indigenous women’s leadership in Latin America.



Criticism in the media, public commentators

Over the years some criticism of The Hunger Project has emerged, including in various media articles.  This criticism has mainly focused on:

  1. the organization's original ties to Werner Erhard and Erhard Seminars Training
  2. the fact that "The early programs of The Hunger Project (1977-1990) focused on public education and advocacy, not on direct action on the ground."The Hunger Project Refutes Innuendos, May 2006, The Hunger Project, website, http://www.thp.org/overview/responses/
The Hunger Project has responded to articles it considers demonstrably false and defamatory. It has sent letters threatening legal action, and in some instances has undertaken legal proceedings, which have sometimes resulted in apologies, correction and payment of damages.  


On May 30, 1981 the board of directors of Oxfam Canada passed a resolution which stated they would not endorse any activities or programs sponsored by The Hunger Project, nor would they accept funds from the project"Hunger Project Feeds Itself", McGill Daily, February 13, 1985[link]..



Complaints, Lawsuits

The Christian Century, the fifth estate, Mother Jones and Rick Ross have all received complaints from The Hunger Project for publishing articles that The Hunger Project considered to be false and defamatory. 



...the Hunger Project has reacted strongly against other reporters who have attempted to cover the group's activities.  Pat Lynch, then an NBC News reporter, stated that the Hunger Project carried out a four-month campaign to discredit her while she was preparing what eventually became an NBC Evening News segment in 1980.  And when [Dan Noyes] was asked by a radio station in 1983 to participate in a program with a Hunger Project spokesperson, the organization refused to appear.  Instead they requested a tape of the program with Noyes alone for review by the group's lawyer.Raising Hell: How the Center for Investigative Reporting Gets the Story., David Weir (journalist), [Dan Noyes], 1983, by the  [Center for Investigative Reporting], Addison-Wesley Publishing Company: Reading Massachusetts.



Timeline of media and commentator criticism

The timeline below shows some of these media articles, and The Hunger Project's responses. For a summary,The Hunger Project: A Historical Background, A News SummaryThe Hunger Project: A Historical Background, A News Summary, April 8, 2004, Rick Ross, http://www.rickross.com/reference/hunger_project/hunger_project1.html, April 8, 2004.  Rick Ross has compiled these reports from public media sources.





Governance and administration


Executive staff



Board membership



Chair Emeritus



Further reading


Corporate websites



Financial information



Other



See also


Individuals



Organizations/Concepts



References
















 





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