The Hunger Project is an international charity organisation committed to working on sustainable solutions to end world hunger.
Their Vision: ‘A world where every woman, man and child leads a healthy, fulfilling life of self-reliance and dignity’. (The Hunger Project, 2018)
Their Mission: ‘To end hunger and poverty by pioneering sustainable, grassroots, women-centered strategies and advocating for their widespread adoption in countries throughout the world’.
Source: Google Images
Back in high school, I volunteered for The Hunger Project within their Canadian division, helping to set up one of their silent auctions that raised money for an initiative they were planning in Africa. At that time, I thought it was an organization like many others, where they raise money to provide food to third world countries. This impression that I had of The Hunger Project was changed after attending their annual New York Gala.
Receiving an invitation to attend The Gala, I jumped at the chance to satisfy my curiosity - how did The Hunger Project plan to end world hunger by 2030? The Gala was a three-day event, gathering 193 world-leaders, along with the executives, employees and guest volunteers of The Hunger Project. Together, we listened to inspiring speeches and stories of delegates that traveled to small villages in Africa and discovered small businesses started by men and women that helped sustain life for their communities. These incredible people came up with incredible self-sustaining innovations that were life changing through enabling them to grown their own food and feed their families.
Listening to these stories made me change the way I viewed poverty and hunger. As The Hunger Project puts it, “…people who live in hunger are not the problem, they are the solution. We don’t see a billion mouths to feed, we see a billion human beings who are enterprising and resilient.” The Hunger Project doesn’t pity the people they help and they don’t help them by just giving them food to feed their families, they offer them leverage to develop the sustainability they have already discovered and created on their own and in turn allow them to strengthen their dignity.
The Hunger Project is a truly inspirational endeavour that shows us a radically new way of how we can contribute back to the community - by reinforcing the seeds of effort which the locals in these communities have planted and by empowering these people and providing them with resources to grow these seeds. We should strive to adopt this new way of giving back.
The purpose of The Hunger Project bears a great resemblance to what King’s Impact Investing Society is striving for, which is encouraging leaders of organisations to find solutions to world issues that does not only provide the immediate aid to the problem, but also can facilitate sustainable innovation and long-term success.