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Programs

EGCF focuses partnerships and grant-making within four core program areas.

The board of EGCF feels strongly that the strategies embedded within each of these core programs have high leverage potential for achieving the foundation's mission. In attempting to shape strategic program priorities, EGCF has placed focus on the Millennium Development Goals adopted by 189 nations, and signed by 147 heads of state during the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000. The 8 goals break down into quantifiable targets and multiple indicators. Currently, goals 1, 2, 3, and 7 help to guide our four program initiatives. For more on the Millennium Development Goals, please visit www.unmillenniumproject.org/goals.

EGCF recognizes that innovations in programs are always evolving and is committed to staying apprised of new initiatives that may further advance mission success. Therefore, EGCF commits to annual review of its core funding priorities to consider whether other focal areas should be considered.

MICROFINANCE AND MICROENTERPRISE

EGCF strongly believes that a key to making both education accessible and improving the overall welfare of children, begins with raising the income earning potential of parents and communities. Microfinance is one of the most innovative and catalytic options to leveraging family assets and improving the future potential of children by providing an access mechanism to loan capital in developing countries. By creating village banks and microfinance institutions in rural areas, organizations provide small working capital in the form of revolving loans at low interest rates, which then generate savings accounts and launch new microenterprises in some of the poorest areas in the world. EGCF considers this a high priority strategy among its program initiatives.

EDUCATION AND LITERACY

Poverty threatens childhood in countless ways including depriving the basic right to education. 84% of children out of school in Latin America and the Caribbean come from the poorest 60% of households. Girls, who are often the first to be withdrawn from school, constitute a majority of this group. Some 75% of children out of primary school in developing countries have mothers who did not attend school. According to UNICEF and UNESCO, studies show that educating girls is critical to ensuring the next generation receives an education. EGCF looks to engage far-reaching and innovative projects that bring educational infrastructure to those communities most in need. At the same time it looks to support projects with time-tested results and measurable accountability.

EARLY CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT

Repeatedly, studies show that economic disadvantages overlap and consequently reinforce one another. The compounding effect of poverty on children often leads to the long-term result of disempowerment. In Mali, for instance, 45% of out of school children are involved in hazardous child labor that not only impacts their health, but ultimately demeans their self-confidence. Beyond basic education access, both adolescents and young adults have little access to programs that build self-esteem or the skill-sets to become leaders in their communities, particularly when school attendance is nominal at best. Youth empowerment projects significantly assist in building these key skill-sets.

SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH

Women and children's welfare is determined not only by their limited access to private assets and capital, but also by access to community resources such as clean water and abundant forests. Growing environmental degradation exacerbates poverty among children and their families. Scarcity of these resources again often results in children dropping out of school, or never attending, in order to simply find the resources necessary to sustain daily nutrition and basic health. Ultimately, unsustainable resource management compounds the work demands of mothers and children and EGCF feels that increased training and support in innovative project areas of health and natural resource conservation is an inextricably linked strategy to poverty-reduction for children.