News and Updates

October 25,2016

Steve Hollingworth
Kathleen Stack

Grameen Foundation and Freedom from Hunger are proud to announce that we have joined forces to form a single unified organization.

Under the banner of Grameen Foundation, our mission is to enable the poor, especially women, to create a world without hunger and poverty

This is more than mere words. It is an unflagging commitment to focus our resources and combined expertise on charting new paths out of poverty with programs that expand financial inclusion, enhance health, strengthen resilience and improve livelihoods for the world’s poorest people.

Through combining the programs, expertise and talent of Grameen Foundation and Freedom from Hunger we will further broaden and deepen our impact, and build a whole that is truly greater than the sum of its parts.

October 25,2016

New organization to combine power of digital technology to end poverty with robust networks of women’s self-help groups in Africa, Asia and Latin America

WASHINGTON, OCTOBER 25, 2016 -- Grameen Foundation and Freedom from Hunger, two global leaders in the fight to end poverty, announced today that they are joining forces to form a single unified global organization.

Under the banner of Grameen Foundation the combined organization will be able to reach more people across the spectrum of poverty, while deepening the focus on the very poor, especially women, its leaders say.

“Our integration comes at an incredibly exciting time,” said Grameen Foundation President and CEO Steve Hollingworth. “Over the past twenty odd years, one billion people have been able to exit extreme poverty. As a combined organization, we have unprecedented opportunity to accelerate such changes, especially for the 800 million people still living in dire poverty and highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.”

The mission of the combined organization is to “Enable the poor, especially women, to create a world without poverty and hunger.” Its programs expand financial inclusion, enhance health, strengthen resilience and improve livelihoods for people in poor, rural communities around the world.

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July 15,2016

Author: Bobbi Gray

In this blog piece, Bobbi Gray, Freedom from Hunger Research Director, shares how we have to balance the science of research with our “hearts”—the information we collect from the women we serve that moves us to action. She shares what we’ve learned about how gender-dynamics in the household can impede women’s use of services designed for their use, with a specific focus on domestic violence, and draws our attention to how “hard” and “soft” data need to be used in tandem for designing products and services as well as measuring impact of our work.

July 15,2016

Bobbi Gray and Megan Gash, Research Directors at Freedom from Hunger, summarize key findings from their research on understanding and building household resilience in Burkina Faso. In this blog, they highlight four papers where they explored what differentiates resilient and non-resilient households, what product designs are necessary to help households financially prepare and respond to household shocks, how health savings and loan products can help build household resilience, and they share a case study on the barriers faced by poor women in accessing some financial services.

July 06,2016

One of the challenges that families face in seeking and receiving adequate medical treatment across the world is that of health financing. Basically, how do they pay for treatment when they need it?

In Ecuador, with the generous support of Visa- NetHope, Freedom from Hunger has been piloting a health credit card —basically a line of credit to cover health costs. Families can use the card at a variety of qualified health establishments. In this article, we share the lessons we have learned in piloting and expanding a portfolio of financial tools that people can use to respond to inevitable health costs.

July 06,2016

We all turned 70 in 2016.

Like just anyone who is turning 70, this year we at Freedom from Hunger have been reflecting on our past, thinking about our legacy and considering what more we'd like to do. From our beginning in 1946, we’ve had one constant item on our bucket list—ending global hunger.

We’ve been at this mission for 70 years. Do people still find the cause of ending global hunger to be compelling?  We believe the answer is “yes,” and even more now than ever. The United Nations has defined a new set of Sustainable Development Goals,[1] one of which is to achieve zero hunger by 2030. We’re in the final countdown.

Over the years we've seen times change, staff at Freedom from Hunger change, strategies change, even the face of hunger change, but our mission to end world hunger has remained unchanged. More than at any other time in our long history, we are confident that we’ll be able to check this goal off the list in our lifetime.

So what is it that we’ve learned in 70 years?... Read More

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