Freedom from Hunger
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Freedom from Hunger | |
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| Type | Non-profit |
| Founded | 1946 |
| Headquarters |  Davis, CA |
| Area served | Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ecuador, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Madagascar, Mali, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, Senegal, Togo |
| Key people | Chris Dunford |
| Employees | 60 (2007) |
| Website | http://www.freedomfromhunger.org |
Freedom from Hunger (established in 1946) is recognized for fighting hunger with innovative self-help programs. An international development organization working in seventeen countries across the globe, Freedom from Hunger is a nonprofit, nongovernmental, nonsectarian organization classified by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) charity. All donations to Freedom from Hunger are fully tax-deductible.
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[edit] History
First known as Meals for Millions, the organization that developed and introduced Multi-Purpose Food, a high-protein powdered food supplement still used today in relief efforts around the world. In the 1970s, Freedom from Hunger began implementing Applied Nutrition Programs, focusing almost exclusively on the health and nutrition of mothers and children. In 1988, Freedom from Hunger developed the world's first integrated microcredit/health and nutrition education program. Today, the Credit with Education program is serving nearly 660,000 families in some of the poorest countries on earth, helping over 3.6 million people worldwide.
[edit] Application of microcredit
In comparison to institution-building microfinance organizations that only provide financial services, Freedom From Hunger supplements its financial services with education and health initiatives designed to improve living standards for the poor. In addition, Freedom From Hunger concentrates on serving the poor in the most rural areas.
[edit] Programs
[edit] Credit with education
Freedom from Hunger works with local partners to offer microcredit loans to poor women in rural areas. The loans, which can vary from as little as $5 to as much as $300, allow the women to become entrepreneurs who run home-based businesses, such as making food products or crafts to sell. The key difference between Credit with Education and similar programs is the emphasis on providing education to the women at their weekly meetings. The women learn about health, nutrition, family planning and sound business practices. In combination with their additional business income, the women act on this knowledge and begin to break the cycle of chronic hunger and poverty. Providing access to these resources in a single integrated program simultaneously teaches women how to help her children and earn the money they need to act on their knowledge.[1]
[edit] Malaria initiative
Freedom From Hunger's Malaria Initiative is sponsored by a grant from GlaxoSmithKline's African Malaria Partnership program. The project focuses on the development and manufacture of anti-malarial drugs, the pursuit of an effective malaria vaccine, and initiatives to build the capacity of poor communities to fight the disease directly. When including the costs of health care, lost productivity, and decreased tourism, malaria costs African countries an aggregate of over $12 billion per year. Malaria often eats up more than 40% of all public health expenditures.[2]
| “ | I learned how to keep my children safe from malaria. | ” |
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—Fatoumata Monomata, Burkina Faso |
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The malaria initiative includes three components. The first component teaches women about how malaria is transmitted, how to recognize the early symptoms of malaria, and how to properly prepare doses of anti-malarial drugs for their children. Because many of the women that Freedom From Hunger works with are illiterate, the educational component is presented through alternative mediums such as role play, story, or song.
The second component is the subsidized distribution of insecticide-treated bednets. Through partnership with local manufacturers and distributors, women can buy the bednets for a highly subsidized price of approximately $4 per net. The program has been highly successful in encouraging the purchase and daily use of bednets and has been shown to demonstrably reduce the incidence rate of malaria. Freedom from Hunger has also secured access to local stores of anti-malarial drugs which can be purchased directly.[3]
The final component of the malaria initiative is intended to ensure the sustainability of the program. Freedom from Hunger has trained local organizations to implement the malaria initiative as part of the Credit with Education program. As a result, the cost of the program is covered by interest payments on microfinance loans.
[edit] Reach Initiative
Reach is a global innovation that breaks through old ways of thinking. It gathers the most effective self-help programs from around the world and makes them available to local organizations that serve the rural poor. It establishes regional service agencies as social enterprises to train thousands of these local organizations to deliver high-quality programs sustainably. In short, Reach breaks the bottleneck between supply and demand to deliver proven self-help services to the people who need them.
Reach brings knowledge, lifeskills, and linkages to massive numbers of poor rural women to build futures of health, hope and dignity for themselves and their families. Reach does this by leveraging the power of groups and the dynamism of private enterprise to deliver proven services brokered from an array of global development organizations. Reach seeks to
- Gather and broker proven self-help services produced by Freedom from Hunger and other development organizations.
- Strengthen the capacity of local organizations to provide poor groups of women and their families with proven, high-impact self-help solutions (like savings, credit, insurance, health education and training, and other critical needs) and facilitate linkages to complementary services provided by other institutions (like health clinics).
- Cover its own operating costs at the regional level to reduce dependency on subsidies.
- Improve the lives of vast numbers of poor rural women and their families.
Reach is being piloted in three very different and populous areas of the world, India, Mexico and West Africa. Each of these areas has large numbers of poor rural people that suffer from chronic hunger, each has a large informal network of self-help groups of women that are served in limited ways by local organizations.
[edit] Microfinance and Health Protection Initiative
Freedom from Hunger launched the Microfinance and Health Protection (MAHP) initiative in 2006 to help their local partners create and sustain key health protection services that complement their credit services and help credit clients safeguard their families' health. Made possible through funding by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, this innovative program not only protects the household incomes of poor families (the cost of paying for treatment can be a major setback for very poor families), it also improves their ability to repay loans on time.
Another important benefit is the improved sustainability of the local organization providing microfinance services to very poor communities. Their ability to sustain and grow their operations is directly linked to the health of their clients.
MAHP is an innovation on Freedom from Hunger’s proven Credit with Education program. Credit with Education combines credit and savings services with education on health topics of vital interest to poor communities. Women who participate in Credit with Education programs come together every week or two to borrow money or repay loans. At these same meetings, women participate in learning sessions on topics such as breastfeeding, child health and nutrition, family planning, women’s health and business training.
Credit with Education is one of the few microfinance programs proven to have statistically beneficial impacts on child health and nutrition.
MAHP takes Credit with Education a step further by adding new services such as:
- health savings plans to help women cover the cost of seeking medical care for their families
- low-cost health products to support women’s use of proven preventions such as insecticide-treated bednets and water purification systems
- group rates at approved health clinics and hospitals to encourage women’s use of vital services such as prenatal care, HIV/AIDS testing and family planning
- micro-insurance that allows women to pay a small, fixed fee in advance of health services they and their families need
- health loans to give women immediate financial support when their families face an emergency (eliminating their need for high-interest moneylenders who keep them in debt for months or even years)
MAHP partners are trained by Freedom from Hunger to provide these services sustainably and to extend special outreach to rural areas where communities are more vulnerable to illness because of increased exposure and few health care options.
Freedom from Hunger is partnering with five microfinance institutions to develop and test MAHP innovations: Bandhan in India, CARD in the Philippines, CRECER in Bolivia, PADME in Benin and RCPB in Burkina Faso. As MAHP demonstrates impact, Freedom from Hunger will bring the successful services to many more countries and organizations.[4]
[edit] Freedom from Hunger Day
In October of 2006, The Yolo County Board of Supervisors proclaimed September 28 to be Freedom from Hunger Day "in recognition of Freedom from Hunger’s 60 years of success in fighting hunger with self-help programs that achieve a lasting end to hunger while promoting the dignity of women and families living in poverty."[5]
In addition, the California State Legislature also declared September 28 as Freedom from Hunger Day in recognition of the problems associated with global hunger and Freedom from Hunger's success in finding sustainable solutions to help end global hunger.
[edit] See also
- Bread for the World, Nationwide Christian citizens movement seeking justice for the world's hungry people by lobbying.
- Empty Bowls , A project where participants create ceramic bowls, then serve a simple meal of soup and bread. In exchange for a meal and the bowl, the guest gives a suggested minimum donation of ten dollars. The meal sponsors and /or guests choose a hunger-fighting organization to receive the money collected.
- Food First, A member-supported, nonprofit 'peoples' think tank and education-for-action center. Their work highlights root causes and value-based solutions to hunger and poverty around the world.
- Kids Can Make Difference, An educational program for middle and high school students, focuses on the root causes of hunger and poverty and how students can help.
- Project Bread, Project Bread's mission is to alleviate, prevent, and ultimately end hunger in Massachusetts.
- RESULTS, An international grassroots citizens lobby, creating the political will to end hunger and the worst aspects of poverty, and empowering people to realize their own personal and political power.
- United Methodist Men's Meals Millions, provides direct relief to the nation's hungry through education about the causes of hunger and the delivery of more than 50 million meals per year.
- World Bank PovertyNet, PovertyNet site is maintained by the Poverty Reduction Group, part of the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network at the World Bank. The site provides resources and support for people working to understand and alleviate hunger.
- World Food Programme, WFP works to put hunger at the centre of the international agenda, promoting policies, strategies and operations that directly benefit the poor and hungry.
- World Hunger Awareness, A dedicated news blog created in order to bring into consciousness the sad reality of the hunger around the world in the 21st century.
- World Hunger Relief, Provided for a program in agroforestry and related technologies to address the needs of the hungry, both foreign and domestic.
