MAY 2002
The Vision, Commitment and Action Workshop:
Awakening the Spirit of Self-Reliance
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Everywhere that hunger persists, one of the deadliest social conditions is resignation. Why do people tolerate a situation that keeps them powerless and malnourished? Because their entire life experience teaches them that nothing can be done.
Conventional approaches have treated hungry people as the problem instead of the solution, as beneficiaries rather than as primary actors, working for their own self-reliance. All individuals have the right and responsibility to be the authors of their own lives and their own development. The work of ending hunger must build from people’s own creativity — their own skills, resources and decision-making.
Therefore, in every region where we work, we begin our mobilization with a strategic methodology called the Vision, Commitment and Action Workshop (VCAW). The VCAW directly attacks and transforms that sense of resignation, that sense of "nothing-can-be-done, and-if-anything-could-be-done, I-couldn’t-do-it."
The workshop rehabilitates people’s accurate sense that they are in fact the key change agents of their society. They learn how to create a vision, set priorities and make a plan to start actualizing that vision into reality based on their own resources.
Cumulatively, more than one million people have participated in The Hunger Project’s VCAW — taking the first step for a self-reliant future free from hunger.
Africa: A Methodology for Success
The VCAW is unleashing local people’s vision and leadership throughout six countries in Africa. VCAWs mobilize families to work together as a community — often for the first time — for the shared goal of achieving the end of hunger on a sustainable basis through the construction of epicenters.
Introduced in Africa in May 1999, VCAWs have rapidly expanded. A vision of self-reliance has spread from village to village through the energized and inspired spirit of volunteer animators. Thus, the villagers carry the vision for a new future to surrounding villages.
In 2001, more than 42,929 people attended VCAWs in Africa, with 2,691 volunteers trained as animators. Once each quarter, the workshops are delivered in villages where the African Women Food Farmer Initiative (AWFFI) has been launched, thereby linking AWFFI with the mobilization work of the VCAW.
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"I completely agree
with what I have learned during this workshop. So true it is that
changing one’s self comes from within and not from outside, as we had
believed before the workshop."
— Joachin Ouédraogo (Zincko epicenter, Burkina Faso)
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| "After all
I had gone through, I thought my life could never change. I had resigned
and given up on life. But when I attended the VCA workshop I was able to
have a vision for my children and my life. My first action was to join
one of the women’s groups, which enabled me access a loan from The
Hunger Project, which I used to put up my garden."
– Juliet Nakiyemba (Wakiso epicenter, Uganda) |
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Bangladesh: Taking Self-Reliant Action to End Hunger
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In order to deliver the workshop to tens of thousands of people, The
Hunger Project-Bangladesh trains volunteer animators to lead
VCAWs and mobilize people in the community to meet local objectives
in health, nutrition, education, sanitation and income. The result has
been numerous initiatives and campaigns, including:
Hunger Project animators in Dhaka — now
deemed the most polluted city in the world — have taken the leadership in
the city’s environmental movement, organizing local neighborhood committees
and rallies of as many as 20,000 people.
- Flood Control Campaign: Rather than waiting for the government to solve their flood control problem, 20,000 people in the Naokhali District built their own embankments to protect 100 acres, enabling them to grow two and three crops a year instead of one. This process has now spread to nearby Gabua, where people have protected 450 acres, and Papua, where they have protected 400 acres.
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"After retirement in 1998, I met a
serious accident and felt that my life was finished. Attending VCAW at
that time, I found new meaning of my life and new responsibility toward
fellow human beings. I then took the animators training in 1999. I am now
a voluntary trainer for The Hunger Project, training and awakening
others."
— Professor Md. Meher-E-Khoda, Ph.D. (Dhaka) |
Latin America: Mobilizing Committed Local Leadership
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In Latin America, The Hunger Project is mobilizing local leaders who can stand in authentic partnership with grassroots people.
In Mexico, we have trained more than 1,500 volunteer animators and 80 advanced animators known as "catalysts" who lead VCAWs around the country. Their work is aimed at breaking through resignation. The workshops they lead result in projects in specific areas: women’s empowerment, food security, health, hygiene, housing, income-generation and job access, education and environment.
Many of the animators, catalysts and trainers work within governmental agencies. They have the ability to cut through the bureaucracy to assist rural people in gaining access to resources that are rightfully theirs.
The VCAW methodology was recently expanded to the Andean region. In February, The Hunger Project-Mexico team traveled to Bolivia, where the team provided the first VCAW and animator training for the staff and volunteers of ACLO, our partner organization — and for staff from NGOs in Peru and Ecuador.
| "Through The Project Hunger, now I
know that a new form of life exists where I am able to face any
misfortunes that confront me personally, socially or within my family. I
know that as a human, I have a commitment in this world, and that my
vision and commitment are to contribute to the end of people dying from
hunger."
— Rocio Rodríguez Garduño (Toluca, Mexico) |