SEPTEMBER 2007

Double Your Money!
The Thirtieth Anniversary Leadership Challenge

Joan Holmes with women leaders from India and Bangladesh

Through intense advocacy during the run-up to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, The Hunger Project secured the adoption of language that became the first principle of the Rio Declaration — that every human being has the right "to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature."

Between now and October 14, every new Hunger Project investment for 2007 will be matched dollar-for-dollar. Our goal is to far surpass last year’s result of $1.5 million and an extraordinary expansion of our strategies for the sustainable end of hunger.

This challenge is designed to maximize our impact as we celebrate our 30th anniversary — and, in particular, to celebrate 30 years of the leadership of our president, Joan Holmes.

Over the past 30 years, Joan Holmes has unequivocally stood for the future — the end of hunger — and has clearly identified leadership as one of the missing key elements. Her bold and courageous stand to call forth that leadership has been demonstrated consistently and emphatically.

Joan Holmes with partners at Atuobikrom Epicenter in Ghana.	Joan Holmes with Hunger Project leaders in Latin America.

Today, the worldwide organization Joan has built, with your partnership, is empowering more than 180,000 local leaders, whose actions are providing opportunities for a better life to more than 30 million people. This includes our country directors, more than 100,000 animators in Bangladesh, thousands more in Mexico and Africa, “people’s reporters” in Bolivia, women leaders in Peru, tens of thousands of women participating in the African Woman Food Farmer Initiative, the women and men who serve on epicenter committees and subcommittees, the 65,000 women panchayat leaders who have been trained by The Hunger Project, and many, many more.

We would like to pay tribute to Joan’s extraordinary leadership and to the fact that she has powerfully called forth leadership for the end of hunger across the globe.

The only suitable way to honor Joan’s leadership is for us to express our own leadership for the end of hunger with the same kind of courage. This is an opportunity for such an expression.

A small group of Hunger Project investors is providing the funding to match your new investments in The Hunger Project, all of which must be committed by October 14 and paid by December 31, 2007.

We invite you to take this opportunity — to express your own financial leadership — and celebrate our 30th anniversary in a way that will enable millions more hungry people to build lives of self-reliance and dignity.

Worst Floods in Living Memory — Hunger Project Leaders Take Action

South Asia is currently reeling from the worst monsoon flooding in living memory. More than 40 million people have been displaced, and more than 2,000 killed.

As in every natural calamity, it is women who are the hardest hit — they have less mobility and more responsibility as primary care-givers in their families.

Devastation caused by recent floods in Bangladesh.

In both India and Bangladesh, local Hunger Project leaders leaped into action — proving once again that when people are mobilized, and when women play a leadership role, it truly makes a difference. Even though The Hunger Project’s programs are clearly about mobilizing people for long-term sustainable development, there are times, as in the present, when our already trained leaders can facilitate critical, immediate needs being met. This is yet another example of the wisdom of the empowerment model of development.

In Bangladesh, our nearly 100,000 trained volunteer animators — 40 percent of whom are women — took immediate action when the floods hit their villages. Within hours, stranded people, and particularly the elderly, were reached and helped to get to dry land, secure dry food, and gain access to water purification tablets. Flood waters become terribly contaminated, and water-borne diseases can rapidly become the biggest killer in flood conditions. And poisonous snakes cause a hazard that becomes deadly when people are cut off from medical treatment.

Students from Bangladeshi universities have volunteered at The Hunger Project’s office to help pack emergency supplies. The Hunger Project-Bangladesh staff members each contributed a day’s wages. And Bangladeshi organizations overseas, such as Phiriye Ano Bangladesh, SpaandanB and Change Bangladesh, are raising money for The Hunger Project’s efforts — knowing that resources in the hands of committed volunteer animators could make a huge difference.

Hunger Project animators bringing dry food, medicines and water purification tablets to those stranded by the flood in Bangladesh.

In India, 57 percent of the flood-affected people live in Bihar, and the vast majority belong to the lowest castes.

For the first time in Bihar, all governmental and nongovernmental organizations in the state have come together to work in coordination. The Hunger Project is a member of the core committee of eight organizations coordinating this wide and diverse coalition, working together from a unified response control room. In addition to coordination, the core committee solves technical and logistical problems, and provides transparency to relief efforts, which in the past have attracted corruption.

The Hunger Project in India is in a unique position to play this role, as all our programs are implemented through the coordinated efforts of 90 partner organizations. In the areas of our Bihar partner organizations in the Madhubani and Muzaffarpur Districts, we’ve been able to work directly with the people, the local women panchayat leaders we have trained, and government agencies to ensure that emergency supplies reach stranded people.

For up-to-date progress reports, and to make a special contribution for the floods that will also qualify for the Thirtieth Anniversary Leadership Challenge, visit www.thp.org/flood.