HISTORY

In 2008 with a $6 million gift from the family of University of Notre Dame Trustee W. Douglas Ford, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies created the Ford Program in Human Development Studies and Solidarity to address the challenges of development confronted by those living in extreme poverty, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

A 1966 Notre Dame alumnus and retired oil industry executive, Ford traveled to Uganda with his wife, Kathleen, and other family members in June 2007. With Mark Roche, I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts and Letters; Rev. Timothy Scully, C.S.C., professor of political science and Kellogg faculty fellow; and Rev. Robert Dowd, C.S.C., Kellogg faculty fellow and assistant professor of political science, they toured Nnindye, gaining a firsthand understanding of the challenges as well as the potential for lasting change that inspired the family’s gift.

Through the Ford Program, Notre Dame has established an interdisciplinary, multicultural, and transnational alliance of individuals, communities and institutions that fight extreme poverty wherever it exists.

While not confined to Africa, this alliance began there and built upon partnerships that Notre Dame already forged. Partners such as Uganda Martyrs University (the nation’s Catholic university), the Millennium Villages Project, and the people of two Ugandan villages – Nnindye, on the shores of Lake Victoria, and Ruhiira, near the Tanzanian border. In Nnindye and Ruhiira, disease, poverty, illiteracy and environmental degradation are major challenges.

“We established this program in hopes of building on the Kellogg Institute’s strong foundation of international research on the multitude of development challenges confronted by the poorest on our planet, especially in sub-Saharan Africa,” Ford said of his family’s gift. “Acknowledging the critical importance for human development of improved healthcare, education, basic infrastructure and micro-enterprise opportunities, we desire to support Notre Dame faculty across various disciplines in their innovative research to help the neediest among us.”

Informed by the principles of Catholic social teaching, the Ford Program has a unique, interdisciplinary approach to the study and practice of human development, emphasizing the inherent dignity of every human person.

“The work of the Ford Program focuses on the human person and address the causes, as well as the consequences, of extreme poverty,” explains Rev. Robert Dowd, C.S.C, founding director. According to Father Dowd, an Africanist, the goal of the Ford Program is “to expand in-classroom opportunities for students to learn about the challenges faced by those living in extreme poverty and to encourage high-level research devoted to fighting such poverty.”

Father Dowd added: “Our students care about the world around them, but know that good intentions are not enough. They want to use both their heads and their hearts. The Ford Program represents another way that Notre Dame attempts to bring head and heart together.”