Small Planet Fund

Jessica Walker Beaumont, SPF Host Committee, Frances Moore Lappé, and Anna Lappé
(photo courtesy of Marj Kleinman)

In 2002, Frances and Anna started the Small Planet Fund to support the grassroots democracy movements worldwide addressing the causes of hunger and poverty. The Fund is a project of RSF (formerly the Rudolf Steiner Foundation) and is overseen by Anna, who volunteers her time to manage the fund.

Since the Fund’s founding, two of its grantees have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize: Dr. Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement in Kenya and Professor Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.

Since 2002, the Fund has raised more than $500,000, through our annual New York City fundraiser and through the support of a generous anonymous donor.

At the 2008 Gala the Small Planet Fund, held on the 60th Anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, honored the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Here Anna Lappé celebrates the Coalition’s Julia Perkins and Gerardo Reyes.

(Photo courtesy of Marj Kleinman)

This dramatic news item, days after the event, captures some of the horrific conditions the Immokalee workers are confronting:

News-Press.com “12/20/08: Four … were sentenced yesterday for “enslaving and brutalizing migrant workers” (“Family sentenced for slavery,” Ft. Myers News-Press, 12/20/08). The case cast a terrifying new light on the recent debate over the significance of farm labor slavery in Florida, a debate that was sparked when the spokesperson for Florida’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services—speaking on behalf of Governor Charlie Crist—appeared to downplay the importance of seven major slavery prosecutions out of Florida’s fields in the past decade…. for more.