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Unheard Voices

Unheard Voices is an important part of Concern’s fight against hunger. Through this campaign, we have been championing the cause of smallholder farmers with donors and decision makers since 2007.

Our charity work: Mariam Omari, 48, in her maize field in Tanzania.
It’s a shocking fact that although enough food is produced globally to feed everyone, there are still close to a billion people going hungry every night.


Around half of the world’s hungry people are poor farmers with small plots of land. They struggle every day to grow or buy enough food for themselves and their families.

Recent progress

Our hunger promise campaign was targeted at the UK government in the run-up to the May 2011 G8 summit. Hundreds of Concern campaigners emailed their local MPs, calling for the UK to keep its £1.1 billion hunger promise. This money was promised at the G8 in 2009 to support agriculture and move towards ending hunger for all.

Thanks to all of you who took part, more than a third of UK MPs received letters from their constituents. Many of these MPs then wrote to Secretary of State Andrew Mitchell. The campaign definitely got his attention. The Secretary of State has re-affirmed the UK’s commitment to keep the hunger promise and has outlined where funds have been distributed to date. 

More work to be done

So, we know the UK government has worked with smallholder farmers in Kenya, Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. However, we’re still concerned that investments in agriculture for hunger reduction are not reaching the majority of those most in need – the poorest farmers with the smallest plots of land. 

While the Secretary of State has assured us that he thinks tackling hunger is important, we know that support to agriculture is still not a high priority for the UK. 

We’ve made a good start but there is more work to be done. We’ll be asking for help with the next stage of the campaign soon. 

Unheard voices videos

Watch our Unheard Voices videos and listen to these farmers' stories in their own words.

Learn more

Some of our campaign reports can be downloaded below:

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