Author: Lisa Gunnery
3 minute read
In Africa, The Hunger Project works to build sustainable community-based programs using the Epicenter Strategy. Over an eight-year period, an epicenter addresses hunger and poverty and moves along a path toward sustainable self-reliance, at which point it is able to fund its own activities and no longer requires financial investment from The Hunger Project.
Why Ghana?
The capital city of Ghana, Accra, is one of the wealthiest and most modern cities on the continent, and is currently experiencing a period of rapid growth and urbanization. Although the country’s GDP continues to rise with oil production, gold mining and other industries, the majority of this wealth is not distributed among the population due to high corruption. As a result, most of Ghana’s poor live in rural areas without basic services such as health care and clean water. Small-scale farmers, who are affected most by rural poverty in Ghana, depend on outdated farming tools and lack access to improved seeds and fertilizers to increase crop yields.
In fact, less than half of all women have received secondary education and almost a third of the population is living on less than $1.25 a day.
Our Work in Ghana.
In Africa, The Hunger Project works to build sustainable community-based programs using the Epicenter Strategy. An epicenter is a dynamic center of community mobilization and action, as well as an actual facility built by community members. Through the Epicenter Strategy, 5,000-25,000 people are brought together as a cluster of rural villages, giving villages more clout with local government than a single village is likely to have while also increasing a community’s ability to collectively utilize resources.
The epicenter building serves as a focal point where the motivation, energies and leadership of the people converge with the resources of local government and non-governmental organizations. Over an eight-year period, an epicenter addresses hunger and poverty and moves along a path toward sustainable self-reliance, at which point it is able to fund its own activities and no longer requires financial investment from The Hunger Project.
There are 45 epicenter communities in Ghana, reaching approximately 494 villages and 324,603 people. The Hunger Project has been working in Ghana since 1995 and is empowering community partners to end their own hunger and poverty. Through its integrated approach to rural development, the Epicenter Strategy, The Hunger Project is working with partners to successfully access the basic services needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and lead lives of self-reliance.
What does self-reliance mean?
8 Features of Self-Reliance
A community declares self-reliance when its members are confident and have the capacity and skills to act as agents of their own development. All self-reliant communities demonstrate progress on the following eight goals:
- Mobilised communities that continuously set and achieve their own development goals.
- Empowered women and girls.
- Improved access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities.
- Improved literacy and education.
- Reduced prevalence of hunger and malnutrition.
- Improved access to, and use of, health resources.
- Reduced incidence of poverty.
- Improved land productivity and climate resilience of smallholder farmers.
