2017 Annual Report Letter
The Joseph Assignment Global Initiative is encouraged by achievements in the effort to eliminate global poverty. Every clean water well constructed, school built and stated, community engaged and revitalized, medical clinic facilitated, shelter operated, and sustainable agriculture infrastructure developed in the world’s poorest regions is a testament to the compassion of our donor partners and volunteer staff. Every life saved and child provided opportunity to fulfill his/her potential is evidence of the power of purposeful collaboration.
The good news is, according to the United Nations, global poverty rates have decreased by more than half in the last two decades. Since its founding in 2005, JAGI has relentlessly contributed to advancing the battle against global poverty, focusing its efforts in many of the poorest, most remote areas of entrenched poverty and neglect in the world. Partnering with JAGI means you are on the winning side in the fight for a world in which hunger and malnutrition, preventable illnesses and infant mortality, illiteracy and lack of educational opportunities, sex tracking and child exploitation, and homelessness and destitute communities are but memories of a dark past never to be revisited. Together we are making progress!
However, acute challenges remain. Today, one in ten people (783 million) in developing regions live on less than US $1.90 a day per family (the international poverty line). Millions more earn just above this daily amount. 42% of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa continues to live below the poverty line. Global poverty continues to disproportionately impact women (122 women aged 25 to 34 living in extreme poverty for every 100 men of the same age group) and children (one in four children under age five in the world has inadequate height for his or her age due to malnutrition.
Four billion persons in the world exist without any social safety net or supportive services.
JAGI continues to be driven by foundational principles:
JAGI maintains accountability to our donors/partners and commitment to operating with integrity and transparency.
As political and economic instability sweeps across the globe, children remain the most vulnerable to adverse impact. Nations and aid agencies are reducing their support in efforts to rid the world of extreme poverty. Climate change disasters disproportionately destroy lives in the most vulnerable communities, facing decreases in disaster relief and redevelopment resources. Already inadequate food production and other life sustaining infrastructures are disrupted.
The need continues to be immense, and the JAGI needs you to continue, and increase, your support for our mission. Thank you for being such committed individual and corporate donors. The lives and communities we have impacted would not be possible without your valued partnership. The progress we have made since our founding in 2005 has been an impressive contribution to the fight against global poverty.
Yet people are still dying from preventable waterborne illnesses. Unfortunately, starvation, malnutrition, easily treatable illnesses and lack of access to education rob children of their dreams and the fulfillment of their potential.
We all suffer the losses of our brothers and sisters deprived of opportunity and life contribution to society. The girl or boy with the aptitude to cure cancer, develop transformational technologies, advance the cause of human welfare, lead nations toward peace and prosperity, or otherwise serve humanity cannot do so without a safe place to live, uncontaminated water to drink, nutritious food to eat, and a quality school in which to learn. Their loss is our loss.
As founder, CEO and lead volunteer, my purpose, motivated by my own rise from poverty, is to maintain an organization with an operational model reflecting 100% commitment to lifting the world’s poorest people and communities from poverty to opportunity. JAGI is designed to commit every dollar of its budget directly into the mission field. This is the Joseph Assignment Global Initiative and you are Joseph.
The Joseph Assignment Global Initiative needs you, where possible, to increase your giving. Write your network to show support and increase the number of JAGI donors and corporate partners (company sponsored school, drill a
clean water well, etc.) or through corporate matching gifts, United Way contributions, etc. The more you give, the more lives you save, and the more men, women and children you uplift.
It is my great honor to have partnered with you these 13 years of progress. Don’t become weary in well doing. The best is yet to come.
