In 2018, Claire is embarking on a quest with The Hunger Project NZ's Awaken programme, a fundraising leadership development opportunity with the goal to ending world hunger by 2030.

Around the world, millions of people eat two or three times a day, but a significant percentage of women eat only once. Many women deny themselves even that one meal to ensure that their children are fed. These women are already suffering the effects of severe malnutrition, which inevitably will be their children’s fate as well.

Studies show that when women are supported and empowered, all of society benefits. Their families are healthier, more children go to school, agricultural productivity improves and incomes increase. In short, communities become more resilient.

The Hunger Project firmly believes that empowering women to be key change agents is an essential element to achieving the end of hunger and poverty.

In eight countries in Africa, The Hunger Project’s strategy brings together clusters of rural villages into “epicentres”. At the physical heart of the Epicentre is a building that houses the community’s programmes for health, education, food security, clean water and economic development. This is literally built brick by brick by the communities themselves.

Alongside this, The Hunger Project provides leadership training which transforms people waiting for hand-outs into confident, productive people who create their own opportunities to feed and care for their families.

This holistic strategy builds a path to sustainable self-reliance through four phases over about eight years. The primary resources for the strategy come from the local people themselves and by making existing local government resources more effective.

Income generation is built into the strategy from the start. Within five to eight years, our epicentres require little or no financial support from The Hunger Project.

In 2016 and 2017 alone, more than 211,000 people, from across 10 Programme Countries have reached a point of Self-Reliance. This is the goal – support communities to act as agents of their own development, so they can further the work begun in partnership with The Hunger Project.

Claire's challenge is to personally raise $10,000 for The Hunger Project’s work in Bangladesh, India, Mexico, South America, and all across Africa. She'll then travel to Malawi at her own cost to see the epicentre strategy in action and meet some amazing people to see the difference we’re all making to World Hunger together.