Anjali Pathak's curry evening

As you are aware, this October was ‘Curry for Change’ month here at Find Your Feet. The idea behind this campaign was to raise money for our work through curry evenings held by our supporters. From the feedback we’ve heard, the curry evenings that were held were a great success!

The quote below is from one very satisfied supporter:

“It was a great evening – I cooked up a feast of Potato Vindaloo, lentils and rice, naan and homemade mango chutney (I was particularly proud of this!). Six friends came round and made a donation for dinner. Everyone was so pleased to be involved in doing something for such a worthwhile cause and it’s such a fantastic idea.”

We are very appreciative of curry connoisseur Anjali Pathak supported our campaign by hosting two ‘Curry for Change’ nights of her own.

We are very grateful to all who held an evening and got involved this October.

Funny Nkhonjera, Malawi

The money raised will truly be life changing for rural communities with which we work. Take the case of Funny Nkhonjera, a Malawian woman that FYF worked with. She was taught sustainable farming skills, such as using compost from local products on her crops, instead of expensive and environmentally-damaging fertilisers. Her local community were also brought together and taught how to properly irrigate their land, meaning that now Funny’s family “has enough food to eat all year round, even during the hungry season”. With the money raised through ‘Curry for Change’, FYF will be able to continue helping the lives of impoverished people like Funny , working with them to achieve a sustainable and higher quality way of life.

Inspired to help people like Funny to build a better future? Find out how to get involved with our work at our website: http://find-your-feet.org/get-involved-today.html

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @FindYourFeet and to like us on Facebook!

As you might have seen on the 10^th, the 2011 Global Hunger Index (GHI) report was published. The report shows that global hunger has declined since 1990, but not dramatically. The 2011 GHI fell by 26 percent from the 1990 GHI, from a score of 19.7 to 14.6. However, this score is not the same worldwide. The 2011 GHI scores for South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, still remain alarming. This year’s report focuses mainly on the impact of rising and volatile food prices on the lives of the world’s poorest people. The report attributes the rising prices to three main reasons: high oil prices, extreme weather events and a significant increase in the trading of agricultural commodity futures. To find out more about how factors affect rising food prices, check out the full report at: http://www.concern.net/sites/concern.net/files/global_hunger_index_report_2011.pdf

The 2011 GHI report was released in advance of this year’s World Food Day, which is celebrated each year on the 16^th October. The Food and Agricultural Organisation of the UN created World Food Day to strengthen international and national action against hunger, malnutrition and poverty and to draw attention to achievements in food and agricultural development. This mission is very much at the heart of FYF’s vision, a world in which everyone has the right to build a future free from poverty. FYF works with the rural poor to develop sustainable solutions to poverty and all its aspects, such as hunger.

FYF’s work to reduce hunger

An illustration of how FYF is working to reduce hunger is our current EU-funded project in Rumphi District, Malawi, which started in 2008 and shall last into 2012. The aim of the project is to achieve improved local and district food production and diversified livelihood opportunities for 12,000 resource poor households in four EPAs of Rumphi District, Malawi. By the end of the project, we aim to have increased household food production and nutritionally improved diets; increased household incomes for resource poor families; and more effective and enabling representative development structures responding to community needs.

The Story of Sumitra

As explained in the previous blog posts, FYF trained Sumitra and the women in her village to use sustainable farming techniques, which diversified their harvest and enabled them to sell their surplus as a Vegetable Growers’ Association. This meant that Sumitra’s household income greatly increased, and her children are now able to attend primary school. Because her children have access to education, their live chances have improved and it is more likely that they would be able to enter into a more skilled labour field. Thus FYF’s work with Sumitra’s community has not only changed the short-term situation but provided the foundations for long term change and improvement for the residents of the village.

Inspired to help people like Sumitra to build a better future? Get involved in Curry for Change and you can have fun with food and friends while helping to make real changes to people’s lives.

Find out more about this initiative at our website: http://www.find-your-feet.org/fundraise/210-curry-for-change.html

Sign up today!

Due to the migration of men to cities to earn money in developing countries, rural women are left in charge of the family’s plot of land. In India for example, women farm half of the land, while in Malawi, women farmers produce 80% of the food grown. Despite this, many of the women still don’t have a voice in their communities and suffer worse
poverty than men, and so at FYF we place a large importance on working with rural women.

Working together to grow and sell

The Story of Sumitra

Sumitra Devi, the woman whose story I am sharing in each blog post, is another example of FYF’s work with rural women. Alongside teaching Sumitra sustainable farming techniques as explained last week, FYF through our local partners also helped the women in Sumitra’s village set up self-help groups (SHG) to discuss economic and social issues that arose in the village. Furthermore, the SHG members each saved a small amount of money in a group fund and were then able
to borrow funds at a fair and fixed rate of interest. As more loans were taken out and repaid, the fund grew and was able to support a growing number of business activities amongst the women, enabling them to develop sustainable
business practices to lift themselves out of poverty. Find out how else FYF helped Sumitra in our next blog.

Inspired to help people like Sumitra to build a better future? Get involved in Curry for Change and you can have fun with food and friends while helping to make real changesto people’s lives.

Find out more about this initiative at our website: http://www.find-your-feet.org/fundraise/210-curry-for-change.html

Sign up today!

Celebrate National Curry Week by hosting a 'Curry For Change' night!

As I am sure you all know, this week is National Curry Week, from 9^th to 15^th October! To help you celebrate this week, we have collected some yummy curry recipes.

To start you off, try this delicious Paneer Hariyali Tikka that serves 8 as a starter.

You will need:

• 500g paneer
• 2 tablespoons ginger garlic paste
• 3 bunches of basil
• 2 bunches of coriander
• 1 bunch of mint
• 200g baby spinach
• 2 green chillies
• 6 cloves garlic
• 2 inch pieces of ginger
• 100g Philadelphia cheese
• Juice of 1 lemon
• Vegetable oil

Cut the paneer into cubes. Apply ginger garlic paste, and salt. Reserve for 30 minutes. Blitz all the greens, along with the ginger, garlic and chilli, adding vegetable oil to aid mixing. Check seasoning and then whisk in the Philadelphia cheese. Apply on the paneer and leave to marinate for at least 2 hours. Thread paneer onto metal skewers and cook in the tandoor for 3 to 4 minutes. Alternatively leave under a hot grill. Serve with onion salad.

For some other scrumptious recipes, check out the Patak website: http://www.pataks.co.uk/recipes/. Anjali Pathak is kindly supporting our Curry for Change campaign and last week provided us with daily top tips and recipes. Check them out on our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/findyourfeet.

Why not celebrate National Curry Week by holding a Curry for Change night? This October we are using curry to help transform the lives of families living in rural poverty in South East Asia. Find out more about this initiative at our website: http://www.find-your-feet.org/fundraise/210-curry-for-change.html

Sign up today!

Brick-kiln Workers

Since 2008, every October 7^th has been World Day for Decent Work (WDDW). The main focus of this year’s WDDW is raising awareness about the issues surrounding precarious work, which refers to non-permanent, temporary, casual, insecure and contingent forms of work. In such economically turbulent times, “decent work must be at the centre of governments’ actions” to “build a new global economy that puts people first” in the words of the ITUC.

Some of us may think that a decent day’s work is just a hard day in the office with a lunch break at noon, but for some it means a lot more. For them, it means not having to wonder if they will be able to earn money that day to be able to feed their hungry families. Workers employed in ‘precarious’ jobs are not covered by labour laws and social security protection and encounter difficulties in law.

Here at FYF, we strive to help those employed in ‘precarious work’, working with the marginalised to realise their rights and achieve more job security. For example, we are currently engaged in working with brick-kiln workers in Utter Pradesh, India. A previous project from 2006 to 2010 saw the establishment of a Brick-kiln Association that represented the rights of local workers, resulting in improved labour conditions, timely payment of wages and non-formal education for the workers’ children. The continuation of this project, funded by DFID, aims to empower 9,483 marginalised people from brick-kiln communities in four districts of Utter Pradesh to realise their civil, economic, political and social rights by March 2015.

That is only one example of how FYF promotes decent work among the marginalised. The story of Sumitra Devi is another. Over the next month, I will be sharing Sumitra’s story with you. Through our local partners, FYF trained Sumitra in sustainable farming techniques to ensure that she would be able to grow crops other than just wheat, on which she had previously relied. This meant an improved healthy diet for her and her family, as well as an improved harvest. This improved harvest created a surplus that Sumitra could sell and earn a higher income for her family. Find out how else FYF helped Sumitra in our next blog.

Inspired to help people like Sumitra to build a better future? Get involved in Curry for Change and you can have fun with food and friends while helping to make real changes to people’s lives.

Find out more about this initiative at our website: http://www.find-your-feet.org/fundraise/210-curry-for-change.html

Sign up today!

Sumitra Devi

As you have probably heard on our website, from our tweets and facebook posts, Find Your Feet is going curry crazy for change over the next few weeks and throughout October. But this may lead you to wonder what ‘change’ we are working towards. Let’s face it, the word gets thrown around a lot, it feels like ‘change’ has lost its real sense of action. But there are still places where ‘change’ retains a strong meaning and represents a real shift and a difference. Here at FYF, we are working towards our own interpretation of ‘change’. Our vision is of a world in which everyone is able to build a future free from poverty. We are talking about real life-changing change!

We work closely with families living in rural areas who are really struggling to break out of the poverty cycle – we believe that to develop long-term solutions to their poverty, the families we work with should be involved in their own change. As a small organisation, and working through local partners, we listen to the needs of the communities and really understand the issues they face so we can provide the right support and enable them to build a future free from hunger and poverty.  So, our ‘Change’ is always focusing on ‘long-term change’

It is also surprising the number of simple solutions that can lead to a life-changing impact. With the right training and support we know families can reduce their hungry months and start to feed and support their children, and this can go on to transform a whole community! Over the course of the coming blog entries, we are going to tell the story of Sumitra Devi to show what a difference ‘change’ can make to her family and community. Sumitra is from the Lucknowyanka Purwa Village, India and was so poor that she was unable to grow enough crops to feed her family or afford medicine when her children were sick. The children in her village could not attend school or have access to clean water. Find out next week how FYF was able to help Sumitra.

Inspired to help people like Sumitra to build a better future? Get involved in Curry for Change and you can have fun with food and friends while helping to make real changes to people’s lives.

Find out more about this initiative at our website: http://www.find-your-feet.org/fundraise/210-curry-for-change.html

Sign up today!

1960 was the year when 17 African countries gained their independence (The Year of Africa); when President Eisenhower signed the ‘Food for Peace’ agreement to supply India with 17 million tonnes of surplus grain; and when FYF began.

In March 1960 FYF was founded by journalist Carol Martin as a response to the Hungarian Refugee Crisis. She was, she says, “motivated by outrage – that we, who live in plenty, do so little.”  It was in this context that FYF was to start working in 12 countries around the world, supporting thousands of people to abolish hunger and ensure long-term food security.

Over the decades that followed ‘International Development’ was caught between the ‘top down,’ neo-liberal approaches characterized by the Bretton Woods structural adjustment programs and ‘bottom up’ approaches in which participation and empowerment formed the core.  Amartya Sen’s concept of Human Development, which finally gained traction in the 1990s, opened the way for a more inclusive conception of development which cannot be reduced to the mere satisfaction of material needs and the accumulation of wealth.

Meanwhile FYF continued to work closely with rural communities, supporting them to access services they are entitled to and to practice agricultural techniques that would conserve the environment.

Then, at a time when many African countries were finally emerging from decades of post independence struggle and autocratic government, and as the environmental damage caused by India’s Green Revolution was starting to become apparent, FYF decided to draw lessons from processes of social and economic change by focusing its activities on fewer countries. This decision was based on the understanding that there are no quick fix solutions to poverty, and that real change requires the dedication of time and resources in supporting communities to build self-reliance .

FYF is currently working with 36,000 people in rural India and Malawi and aims to reach 50,000 people this year. 

Help us celebrate our 50th anniversary this year! Visit http://www.find-your-feet.org/get-involved-today.html