The Unleashed Women's Leaders Initiative focuses on women.
In The Hunger Project we have found that through empowering women:
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•Families are healthier
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•More children go to school and girls stay in school
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•Child marriages are stopped
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•Corruption is brought into the light and defeated
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•Villagers are mobilised to deal with climate change
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•Federations and networks are formed and laws are changed
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•Agricultural productivity improves and incomes increase
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•Crimes against women diminish as rapists and other perpetrators of violence are punished
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•Gender attitudes and behaviours that fuel the spread of HIV AIDS are confronted and transformed
In short, communities become more resilient.
Programs with far reaching leverage
The Hunger Project has trained and supported:
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•75,000 elected women village leaders in India;
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•50,000 women volunteer “animators”1 in Bangladesh;
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•3,000 women “barefoot lawyers” in Bangladesh and across our epicentres in Africa;
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•36,000 women utilising financial services at African epicentre banks per year; and
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•Networks of thousands of indigenous women leaders in Latin America.
Meet Kenchamma
Kenchamma is a poor, illiterate, Dalit (lowest caste) woman who lives in a backward area of Karnataka in Southern India.
Kenchamma was elected on to the local village council. No-one thought she would even attend meetings. She had no voice and no standing in the community. It was expected that she would ratify the decisions of the vested interests.
Kenchamma however had different ideas.
She turned up to her first meeting and sat at the table. She was physically thrown out of the building followed by the chair she sat on and the table she sat at. She was told that if she must attend meetings she is to stand outside and not pollute them all.
After being trained by THP India, Kenchamma came into her own as a leader and as a voice for the poor. Her many achievements include ensuring the supply of electricity to all 400 huts in her village - something never before done. She also made sure that all people, no matter what caste, drink from the same (and only) clean water source. Kenchamma is an inspiration and one of the many examples of the urgency and effectiveness women bring to creating social change when they are empowered by The Hunger Project.
How we can seize a unique moment in history
Training women leaders — taking women on the journey from subjugation to unleashed leadership — is intensive, but the payoff is extraordinary.
When The Hunger Project trains women leaders, we walk the path with them for approximately five years — ensuring that they are able to translate their vision into concrete results for their village.
We ask that you walk this path with them too.
The difference you will make
Your financial investment in The Unleashed Women Leaders Initiative will be life changing for women, men, boys and girls who live in the grinding reality of chronic hunger and who have until now seen no way out.
Empowering women is the way out.
As investors in The Unleashed Women Leaders Initiative you will receive a report twice a year outlining what has been achieved. We will also be holding special evenings throughout the year updating members on the accomplishments and future directions. You will also be able to visit the work on the ground and see this transformation first hand.
Your money will create generations of opportunity and health for children who are yet to be born.
Examples of how $10,000 per year invested through the Unleashed Women Leaders Initiative is used
India
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•30 rural elected local government women leaders trained to set new agenda’s in their villages, bring water and sanitation, stand up to corruption, read budgets, join and work through THP Federations with other women leaders to create systemic political change through the Women's Leadership Workshop and follow up trainings over the 5 years of their term @ $300 per participant equals $10,000. Each woman impacts more than 400 people.
Africa
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•30 local rural women trained in legal rights that most affect women, including property rights, domestic violence, and inheritance law through the Barefoot Woman Lawyers @ $300 participant. These women move on foot between villages, setting up open sessions where they advise women on their rights, and help fight their battles.
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•40 women trained to run intensive and transformative workshops empowering communities with accurate information about the causes of AIDS and exploring the social taboos, attitudes and gender behaviours that fuel the epidemic through HIV/AIDS and Gender Inequality Animators training @ $250 per participant
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•Microfinance for 160 women @$60 per average loan. Women are trained in financial literacy and income generation skills as part of their loan participation
Bangladesh
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•200 women are trained as leaders to run the Vision, Commitment and Action workshop in their villages, run campaigns to educate girls, halt early marriages, and create income opportunities for rural poor through the Animators Training@ $50 per participant
Peru
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•200 members of indigenous women leaders organisations trained in strengthening their organisations and forming joint ventures with other women leaders @$50 per participant
McKinsey & Co Review
“The Hunger Project’s empowerment model is an exciting future engine of truly sustainable development”.
In 2009 McKinsey & Company carried out a review of The Hunger Project’s work in Uganda and found:
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•That we are an effective and efficient organisation.
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•We have a clear exit strategy. Strong, locally-run programs create self-reliant individuals therefore The Hunger Project can leave a sustainable economy in 5-8 years.
Community mobilisation continues even after THP leaves:
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•Number of animators continues to increase
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•Average loan size increased
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•Number of savings accounts increased
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•Community-driven projects continue
The Unleashed Leaders Package
As well as the opportunity to make a very real difference in the lives of women leaders in villagers around the world, we are also offering investors in the Unleashed Women Leaders Initiative a chance to be part of a network of Unleashed Leaders here in Australia. By joining the Initiative you will be part of/receive the following:
‘Leaders Unleashed’ Sessions.
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•Bi-Monthly filmed interviews with top Australian leaders will be emailed to you. Every 2 months one of these extraordinary people will share their insights on bold leadership, lessons learned and why they are part of The Hunger Project Australia.
‘Off the Leash’
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•Two after work events per year with other members of the Unleashed Women Leaders Initiative to share, be updated and meet like minded people committed to empowering women’s leadership
‘Unleashed Families’
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•1 event per year to share THP with children, including philanthropy
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•Connect the next generation to the world as it really is and how they can make a difference
‘Unleashed Leaders’ trip
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•Possibility of being invited on a 6 Day Trip to one of THP’s countries with 20 other Australian Unleashed Leaders.
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•Australian leaders meeting with and learning from grassroots, illiterate women leaders from South Asia or Africa. Even though we might all look different this will be a profound meeting of the minds and hearts.
Twice yearly reporting on what was accomplished on the ground through the Initiative
About The Hunger Project
The Hunger Project is a global, non-profit, strategic organisation committed to the sustainable end of world hunger. In Africa, South Asia and Latin America, THP seeks to end hunger and poverty by empowering people to lead lives of self-reliance, meet their own basic needs and build better futures for their children.
President Bill Clinton: Already you are helping people in more than twenty-five nations to help themselves to end their hunger, and as you say in your prize here, on a sustainable basis. The United States is in your debt for your work.
President Nelson Mandela: The Hunger Project has achieved many successes, particularly through its human development programs. These programs bring together and empower leaders from all sectors of the community, to work together to end hunger.
Belinda Hutchinson, AM, Chair, QBE, President Chief Executive Women
The Hunger Project has a quietly uncompromising approach to relieving poverty by refusing to provide food aid, instead focusing on building self sufficiency in food production. THP has a distinctive “pro-women” approach and believes that providing education and opportunities to women is part of the solution to poverty.
Bruce Beeren, Director, Origin Energy
For several years I had been looking for an aid organisation with an approach that improved living standards in a sustainable way. The Hunger Project model looked promising, so in 2005 I agreed to co-underwrite the establishment of THP in Mozambique. My visit to Mozambique in 2006 convinced me that the model does work, and I am now jointly underwriting a new epicentre in Ethiopia. I am also now a Director on the national Board of THP Australia.
David Gonski, AC, Chair, ASX
The Hunger Project has continued to inspire me and our fellow investors, kept us fully informed and worked with us, making each of the investors in the project feel good and ensuring that this enterprise gets the maximum from those who are interested.
Prof Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize Laureate:
I am delighted that The Hunger Project has taken such a broad view of what needs to be done, of what the world is hungry for.
Speciosa Kazibwe, Former Vice President of Uganda: I have seen what The Hunger Project has done for the women of Uganda, the women of Africa, to look to the future with new hope.
Noleen Heyzer: UNIFEM, the Women’s Fund of the United Nations, is extremely proud to be a partner of The Hunger Project. We share the same strategies. We invest in women.
President Obama honoured THP’s courageous women leaders by meeting with a panchayat leader and THP-I Country Director in November 2010 http://tiny.cc/z7jf0
