Problem

For thousands of villages and communities around the world, the cycle of poverty has crippled opportunities for development for entire generations. While millions of dollars are invested each year in rebuilding destroyed houses, handing out tools, and giving away grants to low-income men and women, without “teaching a man to fish," as the saying goes, the long-term return on that investment fails to materialize.

The Gift

CHF’s participatory approach to development starts with the communities, and ends with the communities, giving individuals the technical skills, training, leadership and conflict mitigation techniques, and market connections they need to design, implement, and maintain their social and physical infrastructure for the long-term. In Iraq, for instance, CHF has worked with more than 450 communities to establish neighborhoods councils that democratically decide whether to build a new school water treatment plant, or woman’s health clinic for their village. Similarly, in war-torn Liberia, Community Peace Councils have been established so that local leaders—at the grassroots level—can be fully-invested stakeholders in their society’s long-term stability and peace. Your gift of $200 can give a village the capacity to establish sustainable, long-term solutions for their social, economic, and environmental conditions.