The world has made great advances in reducing poverty over the past few decades, but it is becoming more difficult to reach the most vulnerable in the hardest places (fragile contexts), which have become the center of the global development crisis. Overlapping crises of the pandemic, climate change and disasters, inflation, conflict, and global food insecurity are having the greatest impact on the most vulnerable people in the hardest places.

These challenges call for a new approach to eradicating extreme poverty. Conventional development has focused on meeting short- and long-term needs. What is missing is a focus on identifying complex risks of shocks (like cyclones and epidemics) and stressors (like chronic unemployment and forced displacement) that disrupt development agendas and peoples’ lives and livelihoods, and then fostering resilient solutions.     

Food for the Hungry has made resilience a central focus of its work with vulnerable communities in fragile contexts, taking an overarching “shared resilience approach.”