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HOPE International charity fights poverty through training farmers

Coupled with Christ-centered financial services and community, underserved men and women experience restored dignity and spiritual, personal, social, and material transformation   

Did you know that farming is one of the most effective jobs for fighting poverty? According to The World Bank, growth in agriculture is two to four times more effective in raising the incomes of families living in poverty, compared to other sectors.

At HOPE International, we believe that equipping farmers in underserved areas around the world is an integral part of the solution to many of the world’s most pressing needs surrounding poverty:

  • Hunger—800 million people go to bed hungry every night*
  • Malnutrition—45% of deaths in children under 5 are related to malnutrition*
  • Financial services—1.7 billion people don’t have access to financial services that could help them invest in their businesses, save for the future, and provide for their families.
  • Unemployment—Farming creates jobs and means of productive income for millions of families.

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“Any business is a challenging one right now in Ukraine.” -Serhii, a farmer in western Ukraine 

When Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine’s economy shrank by about one-third—the largest annual fall in more than 30 years of Ukrainian independence. 18 months after the war began, Ukraine’s economy ministry reported that their gross domestic product grew by 2.2% year-on-year in the first seven months of 2023. 

This is welcome news, but the stark reality remains: It’s challenging to do business in a country at war.   Continue Reading…

In 2010, Small and Micro Enterprise Program (SMEP) Microfinance Bank, a Christ-centered microfinance institution serving families in Kenya, celebrated a major distinction: It became the third deposit-taking microfinance bank in the country to be licensed and regulated by the Central Bank of Kenya. But along with its approval, the central bank issued one caveat: SMEP needed to add investors to its ownership pool.

It sounded like a simple request—yet it proved to be anything but.

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Through CCT, HOPE International's microfinance partner in the Phillipines, Leonora empowers her community.

When Leonora Calipay’s children finished school and she came home to the Philippines, she knew there was something more to her life than retirement.

Leonora’s neighbor noticed her desire to do meaningful things in her free time, so she taught Leonora to sew rugs. With this new skill, Leonora started her own small rugmaking business. She hoped to empower her neighbors—especially the single mothers in her community—to make a living through the same craft.

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For those living on the vulnerable edge of poverty, just one unforeseen health crisis can set back their progress toward financial stability. The security they’ve worked so hard for can vanish in a moment. 

For Cristina Benitez in Paraguay, selling homemade empanadas, sandwiches, and more to her neighbors on weekends was a bustling and effective means of providing for her family. A mother of seven children, she and her husband dreamed of supporting their kids through school so they could secure good jobs.  Continue Reading…

a generator outside a store

Originally posted on Peter Greer’s blog.

For 476 days, we’ve heard about the dire realities of war in Ukraine: Thriving cities abandoned. Loved ones missing. Lives and livelihoods plundered.

In June, farmers HOPE previously served in the Kherson region woke up to the reality of losing yet another harvest. With fields under water from enemy attacks on the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant, their crops and profits have been wiped out.

While traveling to Ukraine to visit our HOPE colleagues recently, these scenes were at the forefront of my mind. The horror and destruction of war I’d read about was real. But as I spent more time with staff and entrepreneurs there, one thing became clear: Even as bombs weakened infrastructure and devastated neighborhoods, they most certainly did not crush the Ukrainian spirit.

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