Dear Friends,

What is a breakout opportunity? It’s the prospect of achieving a transformative ambition. It makes your heart race and your palms sweat. It’s big, even life-changing.

For women and families living in extreme poverty, a breakout opportunity comes from gaining the financial skills and acumen that can turn a smart idea into a reliable income. It’s the ability to send your children to school and to a doctor when they are ill. It’s eliminating the worry of providing your family’s next meal. It’s raising your voice when you’ve always been silent. It’s defying a long legacy of poverty and exclusion. For Shibani Hansda of Brajarajpur, India, the breakout opportunity was Trickle Up.

When we first met Shibani over three years ago, her family of four skipped meals every day for months and migrated to do hard labor far from home just to survive. Now the owner of a thriving farm and a herd of goats, she earns enough to feed her family three meals a day and send her children to school. They no longer have to migrate, and Shibani has paid for repairs to their home. She’s confident, outspoken and has become active in village council meetings. “Now I’m self-reliant,” she declares.

Women like Shibani inspired our founders Glen and Mildred Robbins Leet 37 years ago when they started Trickle Up. They knew that, with a modest seed capital grant and the skills and confidence to use it effectively, women could realize the dream of a better life.

With each Trickle Up business benefiting an average of five people, we estimate that we’ve touched more than a million lives since 1979. Our methods have evolved with the times, but unchanged is our focus on people living in conditions of extreme poverty, vulnerability, and marginalization. A recent three-year study in India found that women in our program gained steady, reliable incomes and productive assets; saved more; and could afford more and better food. Last year, Trickle Up’s impact was independently verified by Impact Matters, which certified Trickle Up as an organization with “proven impact” that is “changing the world.”

In 2016, Trickle Up worked with 40,931 women in India, Africa, and the Americas — benefiting more than 215,000 people. That’s more than three times the number we served in 2015.

In addition to fostering a breakout opportunity for those women and their families in 2016, we realized several breakout opportunities for Trickle Up as an organization. They will accelerate our growth as we aim to reach our next million people within the next five years.

In 2016, we expanded our partnership with the world’s largest economic development program, India’s National Rural Livelihoods Mission. Together, by 2019 our goal is to reach more than 500,000 people in three of the poorest states in India. To realize impact of this scale, with support from the MetLife Foundation, we’re building a coalition of government, NGO, and corporate partners in India. In Burkina Faso, we are working with a coalition of NGO, government, academic, and foundation institutions to test the flexibility of our approach to support greater reach and impact. In Latin America, we recently signed an agreement with the government of Paraguay to assist in designing approaches that reach “the last mile of poverty.”

In addition to expansion through government partnerships, this year we began a project that will put smartphones and solar chargers in the hands of at least 1,800 women in rural villages in India and give them state-of-the-art mobile computing and communication power. With customized applications for business and agriculture advice, weather and market updates, and other information, this project will help us develop tools and techniques that can benefit women around the world. Our primary partners on this initiative are Tata Communications and the Tata Trust.

The economic development core of Trickle Up’s program is a powerful platform for addressing an array of needs. In Burkina Faso, we are testing the effects of Trickle Up’s program on the well-being of children. In Guatemala and Nicaragua, we are pioneering scalable ways to integrate economic development services with traditional services provided to people with disabilities, and testing how our program can support the rights of indigenous people and young women’s sexual and reproductive health. In Mexico and Paraguay, we will reach more than 4,000 indigenous people who are critically under-served by existing programs.

Now in its third year, our partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees includes Egypt, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Burkina Faso. By building effective pilot programs and refining our approach to meet the needs of refugees, we are helping UNHCR toward its goal of serving approximately 200,000 people in a total of 22 countries by 2018.

None of this would be possible without your loyal support and generosity. You make it possible for Shibani Hansda to declare her self-reliance and educate her children, breaking a cycle of extreme poverty her family has confronted for generations. It’s your continued support that inspires us to dream big and reach more people than ever before. When we look forward, we are motivated by the possibility of a world free of extreme poverty within a generation.

With gratitude for all that you do,

Bill Abrams, President
Penny Foley, Board Chair

Dear Friends,

What is a breakout opportunity? It’s the prospect of achieving a transformative ambition. It makes your heart race and your palms sweat. It’s big, even life-changing.

For women and families living in extreme poverty, a breakout opportunity comes from gaining the financial skills and acumen that can turn a smart idea into a reliable income. It’s the ability to send your children to school and to a doctor when they are ill. It’s eliminating the worry of providing your family’s next meal. It’s raising your voice when you’ve always been silent. It’s defying a long legacy of poverty and exclusion. For Shibani Hansda of Brajarajpur, India, the breakout opportunity was Trickle Up.

When we first met Shibani over three years ago, her family of four skipped meals every day for months and migrated to do hard labor far from home just to survive. Now the owner of a thriving farm and a herd of goats, she earns enough to feed her family three meals a day and send her children to school. They no longer have to migrate, and Shibani has paid for repairs to their home. She’s confident, outspoken and has become active in village council meetings. “Now I’m self-reliant,” she declares.

Women like Shibani inspired our founders Glen and Mildred Robbins Leet 37 years ago when they started Trickle Up. They knew that, with a modest seed capital grant and the skills and confidence to use it effectively, women could realize the dream of a better life.

With each Trickle Up business benefiting an average of five people, we estimate that we’ve touched more than a million lives since 1979. Our methods have evolved with the times, but unchanged is our focus on people living in conditions of extreme poverty, vulnerability, and marginalization. A recent three-year study in India found that women in our program gained steady, reliable incomes and productive assets; saved more; and could afford more and better food. Last year, Trickle Up’s impact was independently verified by Impact Matters, which certified Trickle Up as an organization with “proven impact” that is “changing the world.”

In 2016, Trickle Up worked with 40,931 women in India, Africa, and the Americas — benefiting more than 215,000 people. That’s more than three times the number we served in 2015.

In addition to fostering a breakout opportunity for those women and their families in 2016, we realized several breakout opportunities for Trickle Up as an organization. They will accelerate our growth as we aim to reach our next million people within the next five years.

In 2016, we expanded our partnership with the world’s largest economic development program, India’s National Rural Livelihoods Mission. Together, by 2019 our goal is to reach more than 500,000 people in three of the poorest states in India. To realize impact of this scale, with support from the MetLife Foundation, we’re building a coalition of government, NGO, and corporate partners in India. In Burkina Faso, we are working with a coalition of NGO, government, academic, and foundation institutions to test the flexibility of our approach to support greater reach and impact. In Latin America, we recently signed an agreement with the government of Paraguay to assist in designing approaches that reach “the last mile of poverty.”

In addition to expansion through government partnerships, this year we began a project that will put smartphones and solar chargers in the hands of at least 1,800 women in rural villages in India and give them state-of-the-art mobile computing and communication power. With customized applications for business and agriculture advice, weather and market updates, and other information, this project will help us develop tools and techniques that can benefit women around the world. Our primary partners on this initiative are Tata Communications and the Tata Trust.

The economic development core of Trickle Up’s program is a powerful platform for addressing an array of needs. In Burkina Faso, we are testing the effects of Trickle Up’s program on the well-being of children. In Guatemala and Nicaragua, we are pioneering scalable ways to integrate economic development services with traditional services provided to people with disabilities, and testing how our program can support the rights of indigenous people and young women’s sexual and reproductive health. In Mexico and Paraguay, we will reach more than 4,000 indigenous people who are critically underserved by existing programs.

Now in its third year, our partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees includes Egypt, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Burkina Faso. By building effective pilot programs and refining our approach to meet the needs of refugees, we are helping UNHCR toward its goal of serving approximately 200,000 people in a total of 22 countries by 2018.

None of this would be possible without your loyal support and generosity. You make it possible for Shibani Hansda to declare her self-reliance and educate her children, breaking a cycle of extreme poverty her family has confronted for generations. It’s your continued support that inspires us to dream big and reach more people than ever before. When we look forward, we are motivated by the possibility of a world free of extreme poverty within a generation.

With gratitude for all that you do,

Bill Abrams, President
Penny Foley, Board Chair