Annual Report 2008
In an economic climate in which businesses are "going back to basics" and retrenching, Oxfam America finds itself in a unique position. We're optimistic. Those of us in the relief and development business know that good times are often followed by bad, rainy seasons by drought, peace by war. It's fair to say that we adapt readily in crises.
These are difficult times, but we have a vision of what's possible. During the past several years, we've been scaling up. We continue to invest in individual projects—drilling wells, planting mangroves—but increasingly we weigh the value of our efforts in terms of how they contribute to long-term systemic changes.
On the following pages, we offer you the opportunity to look at a handful of our individual projects and the people behind them, because talking in the abstract about scale can't capture what makes us optimistic in these troubled times. And that is? Potential—the potential of millions of poor men and women to overcome poverty and our own potential to foster sweeping change over the long haul.