Our Firm
The Hunger Project
From its inception, JMJ Associates has been a corporate sponsor of The Hunger Project (THP). Founded on closely aligned principles, methods and a commitment to global, sustainable results, our partnership allows both organizations to have a greater reach in the world.
In Africa, Asia and Latin America, THP empowers millions of women and men to end their own hunger. THP has pioneered low-cost, bottom-up, gender-focused strategies in each region where hunger persists. These strategies mobilize clusters of rural villages to create and run their own programs that achieve lasting progress in health, education, nutrition and family income.
In late 2008, the employees of JMJ Associates committed to underwriting the mobilization of a THP epicenter in Ghana, which is named Osonson, located in the Manya Krobo District in the Eastern region of Ghana. Through this epicenter we will support approximately 10,000 villagers to move from abject poverty to self-reliance over a five-year period.
Most recently, THP met with formal and informal leaders of the Osonson communities (villages) to determine their level of willingness and readiness to commit to becoming an epicenter. At this time, 13 communities with 5,043 people have made this commitment to Osonson. The photo below shows members of the Osonson communities meeting with the Robertson Foundation, a major underwriter of the entire scale-up strategy.
We are pleased and inspired to serve as catalysts for the rapid scale-up of THP's epicenter strategy across Ghana and Africa. For more details about THP's epicenter strategy, visit http://www.thp.org/where_we_work/africa/.
Moving forward, we anticipate progress reports from both THP and the epicenter will inspire and instruct us in our own work. We look forward to sharing the tremendous global impact of The Hunger Project's work.
SEPTEMBER 2009 GLOBAL THP UPDATE
For the past two decades, the desire to empower women and children has shaped the core of THP's work. From April to June this year, THP:
- Trained nearly 60,000 women around the globe with life skills including leadership, food security, functional adult literacy and income generation;
- Assisted 3,800 women partners in Africa with credit through a Microfinance Program to grow their small businesses and farming activities;
- Vaccinated more than 12,000 girls at epicenter health centers; and
- Weighed and monitored more than 7,000 girls to support early childhood health.
"Funding an epicenter is a significant increase in JMJ's long-term support of The Hunger Project. This commitment in action inspires me personally as it is a clear demonstration of our desire to make a difference in the world—enabling us to do so as a community and an organization." - Steve Portner, CEO, JMJ Associates