Hunger Blog

On the road in India

I’m Sean Kline, the Director of Reach Global, writing to you from Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), India.

As I write, more than a billion people struggle in poverty that goes beyond a lack of money. These resourceful and resilient people live in poor health, are malnourished, have high maternal and child mortality rates, and suffer from low self-esteem, lack of knowledge, and short life expectancy. Poverty is a cycle that is too often passed from one generation to the next.

But there is hope. Reach is Freedom from Hunger’s innovation that equips millions of poor, rural women and their families to address these fundamental life challenges head on by delivering non-formal education that enables them to improve their livelihoods, secure more and better food, and make informed choices about family planning, business, health, and use of financial services.

Imagine a poor woman needing access to savings and education of the kind I just described. Now imagine just one of the many thousands of local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working in rural areas across India whose staffs are capable and eager to transfer these lifesaving skills and knowledge to millions of such women.

If a woman can turn to the NGO for such resources, to whom can the NGO turn? The answer is Reach, a “social business” that is creating a totally new way to reach poor women and the NGOs that serve them.

Some of my colleagues have joined me in India and will be blogging over the next few days as they travel to some of the poorest communities in India—places like rural Bihar—to see firsthand what Reach, local NGOs and, most importantly, resilient women can do to end hunger for good.

I invite you to follow, ask questions, and comment on my colleagues’ blogs.