“Development is about expanding the choices people have to lead lives that they value.”

—United Nations Development Programme

With a $6 million gift from the family of University of Notre Dame Trustee Douglas Ford and his wife Kathy, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies has created the Ford Family Program in Human Development Studies and Solidarity.  

Human development studies comprise scholarly efforts to understand conditions that affect human welfare, including economic growth and development, the political and social determinants of the distribution of wealth and opportunity, politics and public policy, human rights, and human dignity.

Through teaching, research, and outreach, the Ford Program aspires to address the challenges of human development confronted by those living in extreme poverty, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. On February 23, 2008, the first student symposium, Solidarity in Pursuit of Authentic Human Development, took place at the Kellogg Institute's Hesburgh Center for International Studies.

Grounded in its focus on the dignity of the human person, the program strives to build a wide circle of solidarity with the poor—connecting the Notre Dame community to villages in Africa, encouraging a lifelong commitment to issues of poverty among future decision makers, and linking researchers to life-and-death challenges a half world away. 

The Ford Program is currently partnering with two village projects in Uganda: Ruhiira and Nnindye.