Providing nutrition, empowerment, and opportunity.

Convoy of Hope’s integrated program means that it is ingrained within what we do and how we operate for our programs to blend, overlap, and build upon one another. Training moms to cultivate a school garden that they use to cook meals at their kid’s school doesn’t fit in a clean box of what program it is. It is the expertise of everyone connecting with the local community to identify the solutions that are right for them.

• • Children’s Feeding – Our Children’s Feeding initiative seeks to meet communities where they are at, to address immediate needs, and to provide opportunities that may not otherwise exist for children to stay in or prioritize their education, equipping them for a brighter future. In some communities that may be feeding children in school what could be their only meal of the day so their parents choose to send them to school rather than work. In other communities it may be feeding children at an after-school tutoring center to encourage them to work hard and achieve academic success; helping children believe their future can hold whatever possibility they dream of.
• • Women’s Empowerment – Our Women’s Empowerment initiative seeks to address gender inequality through one of the most powerful forces in a community, the women. Providing community to women and girls who feel alone and are struggling to understand their worth. Providing new moms with safe places to learn about taking care of their children, keeping them well nourished, and developing appropriately. Teaching business skills, helping to set-up savings groups, and enabling women to start their own businesses. All of which create community, help them to discover their own innate value, and provide the groundwork for one of the most beautiful things we have the privilege of seeing. Individuals realizing they have the opportunity to care for others despite the circumstances they find themselves in.
• • Agriculture – Our Agriculture initiative seeks to address food insecurity by creating local sustainable sources of food. From improving efficiency on a two acre broccoli farm, to training cultivation of a community garden that provides vegetables to half a dozen families, to teaching children to plant a single tomato plant in their window so they begin to see the value of producing their own food, agriculture can look like a lot of things. But it all comes together so that families, when presented with the next drought or job loss or war, can weather the challenge, provide for themselves, and care for others.

Asset Based Community Development

 ABCD is a strategy or approach to development work that seeks to view communities through an asset focused lens rather than a needs focused lens. In many ways, it is a mindset shift on how we approach development work that is not only rooted in the direction of the sector but in our core belief that all people are made in the image of God with innate dignity and worth. People are so much more than the things they lack. They are more than single mothers or struggling farmers; they are artists and inventors. ABCD is simply a strategy that reflects that belief and enables communities to further take ownership of their journey.