|
|
News Items
Freedom from Hunger Featured in the New York Times
Today, the New York Times published an exciting article highlighting the importance of combining microfinance with business education. The article not only acknowledges, but also illustrates that the public's interest in programs working to end world hunger has grown with the wider availability of microloans.
Bobbi L. Gray, a research and evaluation specialist with Freedom from Hunger is quoted in the article as saying, "There's been a realization in the microfinance community that loan recipients are more likely to succeed if they also receive business education."
The Times article reinforces this idea by reporting that the nonprofit research group Innovations for Poverty recently found that business run by Peruvian villagers who received microloans combined with business education performed much better than those who only received microloans.
Click here to read the New York Times article featuring Freedom from Hunger.
NETS ARE NOT ENOUGH
When Janet Aqua's 11-year-old son, Ray, became ill with malaria, Janet wasted no time in taking him to a nearby clinic. In the rural Ghanaian town where Janet lives, malaria strikes often and wreaks havoc on lives and livelihoods. Janet knows firsthand how fast malaria can take the life of a child. She has already lost two children, a four-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son, to malaria. When Ray became listless and developed a fever, she closed down her street-side kiosk—her family’s primary source of income—and took him straightaway to the doctor.
Discoveries in the Data:
The five most interesting findings of our research.
There are two numbers that drive Freedom from Hunger–1.2 million (the number of very poor women served by our program partners around the world) and the number 1 (the individual woman whose self-help efforts are supported by Credit with Education and our other service innovations). One by one, these women lift themselves and their families out of poverty and ignorance so deep they were chronically hungry. One by one, they tell us their stories. As much as we'd like to, we can't listen to all 1.2 million stories. Instead, we use research methods of sampling and measurement and statistical analysis to verify our progress. We select a representative group of women, listen to their stories and draw conclusions about the experience of all 1.2 million. This is difficult, but very important work.
Protecting Health to End Hunger.
Safeguarding health helps families feed themselves.
When Freedom from Hunger's Credit with Education program came to her rural town in Ghana, Dorcas Aidoo was one of the first women to join a group and take a loan. "I wanted to free myself from poverty," she said. Dorcas was one of the 800 million people surviving on roughly one dollar or less per day and facing chronic hunger for herself and her four children.
Eight years later, she has made solid progress. She now earns enough money to feed her children nutritious food and send them to school. She has expanded and improved her roadside stand to sell more products, and she even sets aside $56 per month in savings.
A Sense of Urgency for Kadia and Her Children
These days, everyone is looking at the bottom line and cutting back. Freedom from Hunger is no different as it considers where to apply scarce resources for greatest impact. For us, that means focusing even more on what we do best for the people who need us most–like Kadia Cissé, who lives in rural Mali. She is one of the "chronically hungry poor" who cannot reliably feed her family enough good food every day. She has three children and no husband. Her home-based business is earning her just a dollar a day. She and her children have health problems that prevent her from earning more money.
Freedom from Hunger Day 2008 a Big Success!
Established in 2006, and declared an official day of awareness by the State of California, Freedom from Hunger Day commemorates those around the world working tirelessly to end their own hunger. 2008 saw a special online version of Freedom from Hunger Day in which we celebrated the vision of a world free from hunger and committed ourselves to work towards realizing it.
Though Freedom from Hunger day is over, you can still visit our specially designed page here. We hope you will be inspired to make a difference in the lives of millions of women worldwide.
Good health helps poor borrowers repay loans
Global microfinance leaders met Wednesday in San Francisco to discuss a cutting-edge strategy to get the world's poorest borrowers to repay their loans: Keep them healthy.
Philanthropists and anti-poverty experts who use microloans to help families buy a cow or a kiosk to lift themselves out of extreme poverty have noticed illness is the most common reason for default.
Freedom from Hunger, based in Davis, is funded by a $5.6 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and is among a handful of nonprofits experimenting with health care microfinancing.
Second Consecutive Year of Top Rating by Charity Navigator
Freedom from Hunger announced that it has received the highly respected four-star rating from Charity Navigator, the nation's premier charity evaluator that offers the "good housekeeping" seal of approval for sound fiscal management, for the second consecutive year. There is no higher rating than four out of four stars.
|
|
