Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on The Hunger Project. Contrary to its name, The Hunger Project has nothing to do with food. In fact, it prides itself on never having fed a single person through a food handout. Unlike most other models of aid, it does not give out money either. In both the way it operates and the way it achieves its outcomes, The Hunger Project is the most unique and one of the most successful aid programs globally.

The Hunger Project achieves its outcomes through the application of three basic philosophies: (1) mobilising locals at grassroots level to take action on their needs and become self-reliant, (2) confidence and skills building of women to become leaders and equal partners to men in the development agenda, and (3) making local government accountable and deliver service to the community. Directors of The Hunger Project believe that aid or charity models which operate top-down or through handing out money or goods based on perceived need do not achieve optimal outcomes and are not a sustainable long-term strategy for reducing poverty and hunger.

As outlined in The Hunger Project literature, it is a global not-for-profit but it is not a charity. The traditional model of charity focuses on the donor-beneficiary relationship and deprives people of their human dignity, creating ongoing dependence. The following description captures the unique approach to building human capital:

The Hunger Project believes that people who live in hunger are not the problem but the solution. We see human beings who are resilient and enterprising and we work with them to unlock their capacity, creativity and leadership so they end their own hunger. We do not deliver food or services and we don't give money.

It is because of this philosophy that the outcomes of The Hunger Project are outstanding. The Hunger Project's strategies are working so effectively that it is achieving all of the Millennium Development Goals. These are the set of specific outcomes designed to end extreme poverty across the world that the leaders of the United Nations have made a commitment to achieve by 2015.

During its lifetime, The Hunger Project has touched the lives of more than 35 million people with development initiatives, operating in four regions: South-Asia, South America, Mexico and Africa. With just over 300 paid staff across the globe, The Hunger Project has trained a network of 380,000 volunteers, each of whom has made a personal commitment to the philosophes of the program. The Hunger Project is supported by a global community of investors who believe that there is more to life than the consumption of material goods, that each person has capacity to build and value to offer, and that finding and reaching out to new connections through partnerships makes life richer.

This belief was put to me by Perth volunteer and director Ailan Tran, with whom I recently met, and it captures The Hunger Project's approach, being that The Hunger Project is mobilising people living in poverty to take action for sustainable self-reliance and ultimately make them the authors of their own futures. This message of empowering people and giving them the capacity, skills and resources to take charge of their own futures resonates with me, because it aligns with the fundamental principles of the Liberal Party. These include belief in the innate worth of the individual, the right to be independent, the right to own property, the right to achieve and the need to encourage initiative and personal responsibility—in a just and humane society where those who cannot provide for themselves can live in dignity.

Ms Tran told me about a recent trip she made to Bangladesh. In that country, The Hunger Project works with 80 of the local administrative and government units to help the people there become self-reliant. In Bangladesh, 30,000 people can be skilled and equipped to become self-reliant in a year for only $30,000. This is achieved through partnerships with existing NGOs and local government, and by engaging, mobilising and teaching people to build their own capacity and confidence and to take ownership of their own achievements.

What struck me most were Ms Tran's stories about the empowerment of women and the effect that this has had on the entire community. The Hunger Project has trained more than 5,500 women in Bangladesh over the past 10 years. Many were married as children and had experienced malnourishment their whole lives, even during pregnancy. Ms Tran told me that many of the women of in Bangladesh were effectively housebound, whether through local culture, early marriage, lack of education and opportunity, poverty, or a combination of all of these factors and others.

Once the women had received some training from The Hunger Project staff and volunteers, they began to feel more confident, and not just in their communities, where they were able to venture out from their homes and form support group relationships with other women. Ms Tran also told me that, once they had received training, the women had a renewed sense of spirit and purpose and were keen to further their work and skills and to collaborate on even more projects. In a place where women are quite often regarded as having fewer rights than men or have little to no value at all, gender equity is being encouraged and fostered in this way.

Also, rather than being threatened by their wives' empowerment, Bangladeshi men are instead embracing the fact that their partners are receiving education and training, and are learning skills that will help them to derive a second income and bring money into the household. As a result, their children can be healthier and can be educated. Ms Tran said that many of the men welcome the extra income because it reduces the burden on the male in the household and his shame at not being able to provide fully for his family. One of the men Ms Tran spoke to said that, because the women's status has improved, so had their marital relations. On many occasions, the entrepreneurial leadership of the women lifts the family out of poverty.

Another example Ms Tran gave me was about a group of women who had received Animator training. Afterwards, one of the women went around and knocked on the doors of all the families in the local community and asked the women to help her grow vegetables and food for their families. Each woman who agreed to take part saved a very small amount of money, which was pooled to purchase seeds to plant in the gardens of the participants. The women undertook extra free agricultural training provided by The Hunger Project, and over the course of the following two years they started producing surplus, which they sold to nearby villages.

Over time, the women generated enough income to establish community plots where they produce and sell crops for wholesale market—crops such as rhubarb, eggplant, gooseberries, rice, bitter melon, oil and seeds, among other things.

The upshot of this food production is that all of the women in the community have more nutritious food, which means they are better supported through pregnancy and breastfeeding, and the maternal health outcomes have improved.

These are but two examples of programs the Hunger Project runs in Bangladesh alone. Yet another is a self-help group where trained women leaders each look after a group of 25 women and they pool together small amounts of money from the poorest women in society in order to be able to offer small loans to start poultry farms, egg farms or fish farms. The women themselves have become a source of microcredit to each other. There has been a 100 per cent payback rate on these loans. The testimony given by one of these women was that, as a result of starting her egg farm, her husband stopped beating her in anger and frustration over their income and she can now send her daughter to school.

There are many other programs that the Hunger Project volunteers drive in the communities, such as the Youth Ending Hunger program. This is a leadership training program for young people that is run by volunteers and helps catalyse communities to take action to end poverty and hunger. One program that Ms Tran witnessed was a free remedial school that supports children who are struggling to keep up at school and is run by volunteers. Ms Tran met three teenage girls—Satni, Chitra and Julie—who tutor for two hours before school and two hours after school every day. These three young ladies are in high school themselves. Before they start their day tutoring, they are up at 4:30 am with their mothers helping to feed their animals and prepare morning meals, and helping their younger brothers and sisters to get ready for school. But for the girls, the higher motivation is evident. When Julie was asked why she gives her time to volunteer tutoring students, she said, 'We stand for a Bangladesh that is free of illiteracy.' Incredibly, there have been no dropouts from the school where the girls have been tutoring in the last decade.

Ms Tran also told me about several other projects she had witnessed as part of the Youth Ending Hunger initiative during her time in Bangladesh, including sustainable tree-planting initiatives, the establishment of a program for blood donations, building of community libraries and advocacy programs for ending child marriage.

The success of the Hunger Project can only be sustained through strong partnerships with the governments of these communities. The Hunger Project will only engage with national, state and, finally, local governments that are willing to try new methods and take on new programs for education of their citizens in order to change and build communities and improve outcomes. Once the neighbouring communities see the positive changes, they too are inclined to participate. So instead of a top-down, dictatorial donor/recipient relationship, it is a genuine partnership with both sides willing to participate.

Just two weeks ago, Ms Tran's fundraising group the Southern Lights Giving Circle raised $4,000 in their first fundraising event. This is on top of Ms Tran's personal commitment to raise several thousand dollars for the Hunger Project. The Hunger Project encourages the development of human capability, using a hand-up instead of a hand-out approach, and encourages people to learn, plan and build their own projects while taking ownership of the process and building their communities at the same time. I commend their work to the Senate.