Year of Grant: 2014

Location: China

FXB is an international organization with a 25-year history of breaking the cycle of poverty. Using its pioneering FXBVillage model, FXB invests in networks of the world’s poorest people, providing the basic needs of life: housing, healthcare, education, food and economic reinforcement. It additionally provides training to start a business enabling people to pay for those basic needs themselves and become self-sufficient within three years.

UNICEF and the Bejing Institute for Information and Control recently performed an external evaluation of the FXBVillage model. The results do not only indicate a significant increase in household income and assets but also showed a 25% reduction in household debts and significant improvements in children’s health, educational level and emotional well-being.

Since April 2015, our Foundation is supporting 80, mostly women headed households in Bu Tuo, an impoverished region with a high illiteracy rate in Sichuan, China. Where as only 20% were attending school previously, this has since increased to 74% with the support of FXB and Rising Tide Foundation.

For the first year, participants are provided 100% of support, after which, the financial support provided by FXB and Rising Tide Foundation is scaled down as participants increasingly contribute to their families’ needs.

Through the various stages of the program – apprenticeship through to relative autonomy and finally total independence – participants become shareholders of the program. They strengthen the solidarity, represent a safety net for families and the entire community and ensure the sustainability of the project. FXB’s experience shows that over 85% of participants in the program achieve socio-economic independence at the end of the intervention.