Overview

Senegal - long a bastion of stability and democracy in West Africa - became the first country where The Hunger Project launched its bottom-up strategies for the sustainable end of hunger in June 1991. The Hunger Project was invited to launch its work here by the first laureate of the Africa Prize for Leadership, President Abou Diouf.

This work began in the "Forgotten Villages" of Mpal in Northern Senegal - a dry, impoverished area. The women of Mpal set as their priority literacy and enterprise development, and over the next few years an integrated, bottom-up, gender-focused strategy emerged known as the epicenter strategy. There are four phases to the strategy: (1) Initial mobilization, (2) the tipping point, where epicenter facilities are constructed, (3) progress on all fronts and (4) self-reliance.

The key milestone for an epicenter to achieve self-reliance occurs when the epicenter bank - which is entirely run by women - achieves official government recognition. The first rural women-run bank ever to achieve such recognition is our bank in Mpal.

Today there are 17 epicenters in Senegal: six in phase one, eight in phase three, and three are self-reliant.

As of December 15, 2006, the country director of The Hunger Project is Madeleine Cisse

Latest News: International Women's Day in Senegal 2008