The Global Development Program was created in 2006 with the goal of increasing opportunities for people in developing countries to lift themselves out of hunger and poverty.
The statistics are sobering: Approximately 1 billion people live in chronic hunger, and more than 1 billion live in extreme poverty. Yet we are convinced that hunger and poverty are solvable problems. Progress—on a large scale—is possible.
We’ve picked a few areas of focus where we think we can have the greatest impact, and we have spent the past few years developing and beginning to execute on our strategies for these areas.
In this regard, 2008 was a year of significant progress for us. We now have strong teams and solid strategies in place for each of the four areas we’ve chosen: Agricultural Development, Financial Services for the Poor, Policy and Advocacy, and Special Initiatives. Each of these initiatives makes grants to attack the major causes of hunger and poverty at their root.
Still, unquestionably, 2008 was a year of painful setbacks in the broader view of hunger and poverty—and for the people our program aims to serve. A food security crisis pushed millions of people deeper into hunger and poverty. And the global financial crisis threatens to slow growth in developing countries and to cut into aid budgets in developed countries.
We believe 2008 will be remembered as a turning point in the world's efforts to address hunger and poverty. We are committed to helping ensure that the challenges of the past year strengthen, and not weaken, the world’s resolve to solve them.
Below are a few examples of how we’re working to help people in developing countries overcome hunger and poverty and why we’re optimistic about what we can achieve together with the many partners who share our passion for this cause.
Agricultural Development
The food security crisis has helped reveal a larger crisis: Most of the world’s poorest people rely on agriculture for their food and incomes but struggle to grow and sell enough to feed their families.
Our agricultural development strategy takes a comprehensive approach to the challenges poor farmers face: from investing in improved seeds and soils and supporting effective farm management practices to expanding farmers’ access to markets and funding research. In January 2008, we announced a package of six grants that illustrate the range of our strategy. We also created a new section on our web site, Tracking Our Progress in Agricultural Development, to help people learn more about the grants and follow progress, setbacks, and lessons we've learned.
One of these grants, to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), aims to develop improved varieties of rice and deliver them to 400,000 farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Rice is a critical crop for the world’s poor—approximately 2.5 billion people consume it—and demand is growing. But production isn’t keeping pace, and rice crops are often ruined by droughts, floods, and other threats.
The IRRI grant pairs rice breeders with farmers in a process called “participatory breeding.” This method ensures that the improved varieties of rice meet the needs of the farmers who will eventually plant them.
We’ve seen great progress so far. IRRI researchers have made a remarkable breakthrough, breeding a rice variety that can “hold its breath” under water for nearly three weeks. Imagine the fields of two farmers, side by side in flood-prone Bangladesh—one planted with the new seed, and one without. The difference between the two is a plentiful crop and a step toward prosperity or a failed crop and a step further into poverty. Researchers have also been successfully developing new rice varieties to withstand drought and excess salt in soils.
IRRI and its partners have already helped develop and distribute hundreds of tons of improved rice seeds to farmers, and they are working closely with farmers, governments, and the private sector so that many more poor rice farmers are able to improve their food security and increase their incomes.
Financial Services for the Poor
In recent years, microcredit—providing small loans to the poor for income-generating purposes—has enjoyed increasing success. Microcredit has shown that poor people want and will pay for financial services.
Loans are important, but they’re not enough. We’ve learned valuable lessons about what kinds of financial services poor people use and want through our grantees and others in the field. One of our grantees, the Financial Access Initiative (FAI), a research consortium, has shown compelling evidence that poor people, like all people, need a range of financial services to manage risks, take advantage of opportunities, and increase their financial security.
One of FAI’s research projects documented how poor people without formal financial services manage their money. In Bangladesh, a couple named Hamid and Khadeja used 12 different informal methods to manage a monthly income of $70. They especially needed safe places to save and accumulate their money.
Hamid and Khadeja’s story is not unique: More than 2 billion people in the developing world are forced to turn to costly and risky approaches, such as storing money in mattresses.
In 2008, we approved a strategy that focuses on increasing safe, affordable ways for the poor to save.
One of the biggest challenges in providing savings accounts to the poor is cost. Bricks-and-mortar bank branches are simply too expensive for banks to build and operate in the places where poor people live.
One of our grantees, Opportunity International, is tackling this problem by using technology and a new business model to take banking out of bank branches and into the neighborhoods and rural communities where poor people live and work. The organization’s major innovation has been to develop a fleet of mobile banking units—trucks equipped with satellite technology, fingerprint scanning for identification purposes, and ATM services.
In Malawi, where 85 percent of the population lives in rural areas, formal banking services are scarce. But Opportunity International’s mobile trucks and other banking outlets are now serving more than 200,000 savings account holders—in addition to providing loans and insurance services—with much greater convenience for the poor and at a fraction of the cost of a conventional bank.
Special Initiatives
Most of our work, such as agricultural development and financial services for the poor, is focused on long-term, large-scale solutions to hunger and poverty. But as the food security crisis demonstrated, sometimes rapid and flexible action is required.
As part of the foundation’s response to this crisis, we awarded $18.9 million in grants to help those most affected. The largest grant, to the World Food Programme, helps feed young children and pregnant and breastfeeding mothers in Niger, Côte D’Ivoire, and Burkina Faso, where malnutrition rates are staggering.
In emergencies, there is often a gap between immediate relief efforts and longer-term recovery. A farmer might receive food in the days after a crisis, but she may not be able to purchase supplies to grow food for the next season. A grant to Mercy Corps exemplifies how our response is helping to bridge that gap.
In Sri Lanka, for example, Mercy Corps provided not only immediate food assistance but also seeds and other support. As a result, farmers there will have a sustainable way to generate food and income in the future.
These short- and medium-term efforts are helping address some of the consequences of the food security crisis, but we can't forget the causes. Despite the fact that a majority of the world’s poorest people rely on agriculture for their livelihoods, attention to and investments in agriculture have been lagging for years.
Our Policy and Advocacy team is working to help highlight the need for effective, sustained investments—by both developed and developing countries—in agriculture and other areas that give poor people opportunities to escape the cycle of hunger and poverty altogether.