Since its inception and throughout its organizational existence and operations, poverty alleviation remains the central focus of HUNDEE’s work. Our understanding of poverty often goes beyond the purely economic to encompass the inability to meet basic needs; poverty of opportunity and vulnerability to poverty. Although poverty affects women and men, boys and girls, but the impacts are different based on their sex, age, social and economic status, literacy and disability. As a development agency, we are also increasingly aware of the fact that power imbalance and inequality is the most vicious and persistent driver of poverty, discrimination and exclusion.
HUNDEE’s has strong aspiration that equality and dignity of all human persons are respected and protected. This is clearly and adequately reflected in its organizational vision that is centered on “human dignity and prosperity.” What underpins this vision statement is that poverty is understood not only as material deprivation but also as power imbalance in social, economic and political spheres. This power imbalance has negatively affected the poor in general, children and women in particular who are socially marginalized, economically disadvantaged and politically disenfranchised that face the harsher part of poverty. To this end, the development discourses that we pursue harbor around working with such marginalized sections of the community so that they enjoy a dignified life.
It is essentially this understanding that has given rise to the development of key organizational elements such as its vision, mission, goal, objectives and also thematic areas of its program engagement. In its organizational development processes, this understanding is effectively accompanied by critical self-reflection and ongoing organizational learning. The outcome of this organizational learning practice significantly helped us to identify critical areas of our engagement and set our strategic position. In this regard, HUNDEE’s strategic positioning has been developed and anchored around the following pillars. These are:
- The need to become conscious and vibrant civil society organization (CSO) that facilitates community development in a genuinely participatory, accountable and inclusive manner.
- Renewed commitment towards being and becoming sensitive and responsive to issues that affect women, men, boys and girls at both organizational and program operation levels;
- Fostering networking and partnership based on mutual trust, transparency and accountability.
- The quest for improving performance and quality of services we deliver to our constituencies’.
Our Programs:
HUNDEE appreciates an imbalance in power relationship as a root cause of poverty in which the marginalized and vulnerable segments of the community experience multiple faces of poverty. In particular, in the traditional communities where HUNDEE operates, power imbalance that perpetuates poverty is deeply embedded in and strongly reinforced by the existence of patriarchal norms and traditions. In view of this, it strives to integrate social and economic development projects with initiatives with civic education and community advocacy programming. In this regard, an important aspect of HUNDEE’s programming is integration of gender issues and concerns to address gender disparities which exists at many levels, particularly with grassroots communities. Accordingly, HUNDEE consciously integrates the gender dimension in its programming, targeting and also staffing. HUNDEE also gives due credence to decentralized programming with a view of empowering field staff towards attaining maximum efficiency and effectiveness, and facilitating critical inputs and feedbacks both from its beneficiaries as well as other key stakeholders in all aspects of program planning, development, implementation as well as monitoring and evaluation.
In light of this, two core orientations often underpin HUNDEE’s program operations and engagement. These are development and civic/popular education. The civic/popular engagement includes all what the organization does in terms of institutionalizing protection of women and girls against the health impacts of harmful traditional practices (HTP’s) on the one hand and organizing and capacity building of communities to exact accountabilities from service providers, etc. The development services are as varied as the civic engagement. Over the years HUNDEE has shown considerable interest on issues of food security, livelihoods enhancement and community resilience building, child protection, youth development, women empowerment emergency responses and support.
HUNDEE has adopted and currently promoting its core programs around the following thematic areas that significantly revolve around:
- Agricultural Marketing and Food Security Program
- Community Mobilization and Citizens’ Engagement Program
- Child, Youth and Women Development Program
- Livelihoods, Resilience Building and Humanitarian Response Program
- Health, WaSH and Nutrition Program.
Crosscutting Issues:
- Gender
- HIV/AIDS
Environment and Adaptation to Climate Change
