Funding Priorities

MAZON has always been overwhelmingly a Jewish response to hunger in the United States. Therefore, we award only a small number of grants in Israel and in developing countries each year.

MAZON principally funds programs that strengthen poor families’ ability to feed themselves, and that promote equitable practices that enable hungry people to access the food they need — whether through greater access to land, more control over the food production processes or a better social safety net. International grantees also include several direct feeding programs.

Our approach to food and hunger issues abroad — like our approach in the United States — is based on an understanding that long-term hunger solutions are found in initiatives that address not only immediate needs but also hunger’s root causes. U.S.-based organizations working in developing countries must demonstrate that their programs:

• have a significant hunger component that addresses long-term hunger prevention and relief;
  
  
• facilitate self-reliance and encourage local independence by increasing low-income people's access to and control of productive resources;
  
  
• work in cooperation with local or national institutions (for example, women's groups, community organizations, local NGOs);
  
  
• train low-income people and/or involve them in the design, implementation, control and evaluation of the project;
  
  
• employ ecologically sound principles and, when possible, use locally available resources, appropriate and affordable technologies and minimize the use of external or purchased materials;
  
  
• draw upon and build on existing capacities of vulnerable groups, particularly women.