Overview
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India is the world's largest democracy with a population of 1.19 billion. Of this, 34 percent live on less than US$1 a day, and 80 percent on less than US$2 a day. With 47 percent of children underweight, India has severe levels of child malnutrition,
ranking it third in the world. The future of rural India, where the highest concentration of poverty prevails, depends on overcoming enormous challenges in health, education, nutrition, population and environment. Women bear primary responsibility in every one of these areas.
Our Work
The Hunger Project has been active in India since 1984 and currently works across eight states. The Hunger Project's approach of mobilizing people for self-reliant action, empowering women as key change agents and engaging with local government has culminated in one comprehensive strategy,
The 73rd Amendment to the Indian Constitution mandated that one-third of all seats in panchayats (village councils) be reserved for women, bringing more than one million women into elected office. The Hunger Project facilitates the leadership of these women leaders with key interventions in each year of their five year tenures.
Year One: Conduct Women Leadership Workshops (WLW) and follow-up needs-based workshops to strengthen skills of women leaders.
Year Two: Work with leaders to create bottom-up plans for villages to meet basic needs.
Year Three: Facilitate the formation of federations at district and state level to overcome bureaucratic obstacles.
Year Four: Focus on ensuring successful implementation of plans and policy changes.
Year Five: Carry out campaigns to encourage participation of women as voters and as candidates in the run-up to elections.
The Hunger Project, in partnership with about 50 local civil society organizations, has trained more than 78,000 elected women representatives. Examples of the interventions within this strategy include.
Empowering Women in Elections
To encourage voter participation among women and nominations of potential women leaders, The Hunger Project conducts intensive pre-election campaigns. SWEEP (Strengthening Women's Empowerment in Electoral Processes) campaigns include meetings, film screenings, street plays, door-to-door contacts, trainings and distribution of posters and pamphlets.
Federations for Advocacy and Mutual Empowerment
To empower women leaders and their communities, The Hunger Project supports the formation of federations among their elected leaders. In the states of Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Rajasthan, women leaders are creating federations at the district and state levels to voice their concerns as a collective unit. Priority issues include 50 percent reservation of seats in local government for women, removal of two-child norm laws and increased transparency and support between levels of government.
Mobilizing the Media to Support Women Leaders
To highlight the work of women leaders and Panchayati Raj, The Hunger Project actively engages with the media and annually awards the Sarojini Naidu Prize. The prize showcases the efforts being made by the elected women and recognizes three journalists reporting on their work in Hindi, English and other Indian language categories.
Coping with Climate Change
In partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund, The Hunger Project is training elected women to build the capacity of their villages to cope with the ravages of climate change.
Implementing Disaster Preparedness
To strengthen local governance and improve disaster preparedness in 17 areas affected by the 2004 tsunami, The Hunger Project facilitated the formation of contingency plans for use by each of the panchayats, including digitized maps that will help villagers evacuate in times of natural disasters and developing the capacity of the community for managing disasters.
History
The Hunger Project was founded in 1977, in the wake of the rising debate on world hunger triggered by the first Rome World Food Conference.
Rather than simply being another relief organization, The Hunger Project was created as a strategic organization. Over the years, The Hunger Project has reinvented itself time and again to meet each challenge along the path of ending hunger.
Global Will and Commitment, 1977-1989. The Hunger Project carried out the world’s largest public education and advocacy campaign on the issue of hunger, designed to mobilize a global constituency committed to the end of hunger.
Aligning the hunger response community, 1979-1986. The Hunger Project played a catalytic role in mobilizing international support to stop famines in Cambodia (1979), Somalia (1980) and the entire African continent (1983-85). It was instrumental in the formation of InterAction – the coalition of US-based international relief and development organizations.
Committed leadership in Africa, 1987… After the 1985 famine, it was clear that Africa lacks sufficient leadership committed to the wellbeing of its people. To address this, The Hunger Project launched the Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger in 1987.
Effective action at the grassroots, 1990… Typical top-down and charitable responses to hunger have proven too inefficient and inflexible to meet the challenge of hunger. In 1990, with the Planning Commission of India, The Hunger Project pioneered a new, decentralized, holistic, people-centered approach known as Strategic Planning in Action (SPIA). About 21,000 villages in Asia, Africa and Latin America have applied SPIA to empower people to achieve lasting improvements in health, education, nutrition and family income.
African Woman Food Farmer Initiative, 1999… Women grow the majority of food for household consumption in Africa, yet have been almost completely bypassed by official efforts to improve food production. The Hunger Project launched a new initiative to (a) develop and demonstrate an effective large-scale program of training and credit to economically empower tens of thousands of African women food farmers and (b) awaken policy makers to the fact that Africa’s future depends on the future of Africa’s women food farmers through a massive advocacy campaign.
Women and Local Democracy, 2000… Experts have shown that South Asia has the highest rates of childhood malnutrition because its women suffer the worst subjugation. New laws in India and Bangladesh, guaranteeing grassroots women seats in local government, present a unique opportunity to transform this age-old condition. In 2000, The Hunger Project launched an initiative which has provided leadership training to about 78,000 elected women, builds networks of ongoing support, and mobilizes the media for public support.
AIDS and Gender, 2001… AIDS is setting back decades of progress in Africa, and is out of control largely because women lack the power to protect themselves. In 2003, The Hunger Project launched a campaign based on the "AIDS and Gender Inequality Workshop" to empower people at the grassroots level to protect themselves and alter behaviors that drive the spread of the disease. The campaign has trained more than 980,000 people.
Focus on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), 2004... Founding President of The Hunger Project, Joan Holmes, was appointed to serve on the United Nations Millennium Project Hunger Task Force. The Hunger Project seized the opportunity of unprecedented worldwide attention on issues of hunger and poverty to play a leadership role for the MDGs and highlight gender as a priority. We launched a campaign of education and advocacy designed to transform the way the world does development and have the world community recognize that bottom-up, gender-focused strategies are the only viable pathway to achieving the MDGs on a sustainable basis. We worked with our Country Directors to reexamine our programs to ensure they were at the cutting edge of strategic action to achieve the MDGs.
...At the G8 Summit in July 2009, world leaders made an unparalleled financial commitment to end world hunger and there was a growing shift in development thinking toward long-term, sustainable approaches that acknowledge women as key to the process. In this new climate, The Hunger Project's designed a strategic direction to expand our scope via three key priorities: partnerships, advocacy, and impact.
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India is the world's largest democracy with a population of 1.19 billion. Of this, 34 percent live on less than US$1 a day, and 80 percent on less than US$2 a day. With 47 percent of children underweight, India has severe levels of child malnutrition, ranking it third in the world. The future of rural India, where the highest concentration of poverty prevails, depends on overcoming enormous challenges in health, education, nutrition, population and environment. Women bear primary responsibility in every one of these areas.
Our Work
The Hunger Project has been active in India since 1984 and currently works across eight states. The Hunger Project's approach of mobilizing people for self-reliant action, empowering women as key change agents and engaging with local government has culminated in one comprehensive strategy,
The 73rd Amendment to the Indian Constitution mandated that one-third of all seats in panchayats (village councils) be reserved for women, bringing more than one million women into elected office. The Hunger Project facilitates the leadership of these women leaders with key interventions in each year of their five year tenures.
Year One: Conduct Women Leadership Workshops (WLW) and follow-up needs-based workshops to strengthen skills of women leaders.
Year Two: Work with leaders to create bottom-up plans for villages to meet basic needs.
Year Three: Facilitate the formation of federations at district and state level to overcome bureaucratic obstacles.
Year Four: Focus on ensuring successful implementation of plans and policy changes.
Year Five: Carry out campaigns to encourage participation of women as voters and as candidates in the run-up to elections.
The Hunger Project, in partnership with about 50 local civil society organizations, has trained more than 78,000 elected women representatives. Examples of the interventions within this strategy include.
Empowering Women in Elections
To encourage voter participation among women and nominations of potential women leaders, The Hunger Project conducts intensive pre-election campaigns. SWEEP (Strengthening Women's Empowerment in Electoral Processes) campaigns include meetings, film screenings, street plays, door-to-door contacts, trainings and distribution of posters and pamphlets.
Federations for Advocacy and Mutual Empowerment
To empower women leaders and their communities, The Hunger Project supports the formation of federations among their elected leaders. In the states of Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Rajasthan, women leaders are creating federations at the district and state levels to voice their concerns as a collective unit. Priority issues include 50 percent reservation of seats in local government for women, removal of two-child norm laws and increased transparency and support between levels of government.
Mobilizing the Media to Support Women Leaders
To highlight the work of women leaders and Panchayati Raj, The Hunger Project actively engages with the media and annually awards the Sarojini Naidu Prize. The prize showcases the efforts being made by the elected women and recognizes three journalists reporting on their work in Hindi, English and other Indian language categories.
Coping with Climate Change
In partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund, The Hunger Project is training elected women to build the capacity of their villages to cope with the ravages of climate change.
Implementing Disaster Preparedness
To strengthen local governance and improve disaster preparedness in 17 areas affected by the 2004 tsunami, The Hunger Project facilitated the formation of contingency plans for use by each of the panchayats, including digitized maps that will help villagers evacuate in times of natural disasters and developing the capacity of the community for managing disasters.
History
The Hunger Project was founded in 1977, in the wake of the rising debate on world hunger triggered by the first Rome World Food Conference.
Rather than simply being another relief organization, The Hunger Project was created as a strategic organization. Over the years, The Hunger Project has reinvented itself time and again to meet each challenge along the path of ending hunger.
Global Will and Commitment, 1977-1989. The Hunger Project carried out the world’s largest public education and advocacy campaign on the issue of hunger, designed to mobilize a global constituency committed to the end of hunger.
Aligning the hunger response community, 1979-1986. The Hunger Project played a catalytic role in mobilizing international support to stop famines in Cambodia (1979), Somalia (1980) and the entire African continent (1983-85). It was instrumental in the formation of InterAction – the coalition of US-based international relief and development organizations.
Committed leadership in Africa, 1987… After the 1985 famine, it was clear that Africa lacks sufficient leadership committed to the wellbeing of its people. To address this, The Hunger Project launched the Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger in 1987.
Effective action at the grassroots, 1990… Typical top-down and charitable responses to hunger have proven too inefficient and inflexible to meet the challenge of hunger. In 1990, with the Planning Commission of India, The Hunger Project pioneered a new, decentralized, holistic, people-centered approach known as Strategic Planning in Action (SPIA). About 21,000 villages in Asia, Africa and Latin America have applied SPIA to empower people to achieve lasting improvements in health, education, nutrition and family income.
African Woman Food Farmer Initiative, 1999… Women grow the majority of food for household consumption in Africa, yet have been almost completely bypassed by official efforts to improve food production. The Hunger Project launched a new initiative to (a) develop and demonstrate an effective large-scale program of training and credit to economically empower tens of thousands of African women food farmers and (b) awaken policy makers to the fact that Africa’s future depends on the future of Africa’s women food farmers through a massive advocacy campaign.
Women and Local Democracy, 2000… Experts have shown that South Asia has the highest rates of childhood malnutrition because its women suffer the worst subjugation. New laws in India and Bangladesh, guaranteeing grassroots women seats in local government, present a unique opportunity to transform this age-old condition. In 2000, The Hunger Project launched an initiative which has provided leadership training to about 78,000 elected women, builds networks of ongoing support, and mobilizes the media for public support.
AIDS and Gender, 2001… AIDS is setting back decades of progress in Africa, and is out of control largely because women lack the power to protect themselves. In 2003, The Hunger Project launched a campaign based on the "AIDS and Gender Inequality Workshop" to empower people at the grassroots level to protect themselves and alter behaviors that drive the spread of the disease. The campaign has trained more than 980,000 people.
Focus on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), 2004... Founding President of The Hunger Project, Joan Holmes, was appointed to serve on the United Nations Millennium Project Hunger Task Force. The Hunger Project seized the opportunity of unprecedented worldwide attention on issues of hunger and poverty to play a leadership role for the MDGs and highlight gender as a priority. We launched a campaign of education and advocacy designed to transform the way the world does development and have the world community recognize that bottom-up, gender-focused strategies are the only viable pathway to achieving the MDGs on a sustainable basis. We worked with our Country Directors to reexamine our programs to ensure they were at the cutting edge of strategic action to achieve the MDGs.
...At the G8 Summit in July 2009, world leaders made an unparalleled financial commitment to end world hunger and there was a growing shift in development thinking toward long-term, sustainable approaches that acknowledge women as key to the process. In this new climate, The Hunger Project's designed a strategic direction to expand our scope via three key priorities: partnerships, advocacy, and impact.
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