Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps and NetAid Join Forces to Move Americans from Awareness to Action. Merger Provides New Model for U.S. Education to Fight Global Poverty


Mercy Corps, the global humanitarian agency, and NetAid, a nonprofit that works nationally to empower young people to fight global poverty, announced today that they have officially merged organizations in a new effort to radically change the way that Americans – especially young Americans – learn about and respond to the challenges of global poverty.

The merger represents a new model for relief and development organizations committed to aligning U.S. public engagement on global poverty with the vast and immediate needs in the poorest regions of the world.

"Together, we seek nothing less than to transform a generation of leaders," stated Neal Keny-Guyer, chief executive officer of Mercy Corps. "We aim to bring the complex issues of poverty, aid and development to young Americans, the group best positioned to make lasting changes to the world's toughest problems."

NetAid's programs will collectively become an initiative of Mercy Corps and one of the central pillars in Mercy Corps' strategy to build a stronger, smarter U.S. domestic constituency committed to ending global poverty.

In spring 2008, Mercy Corps will open the doors of its new hunger and poverty action center in New York's Battery Park City. The center is an unprecedented initiative to build public awareness about how assets and access to opportunity can transform the lives of families living amid poverty, disaster and conflict around the world. The new center, anticipating nearly 100,000 visitors annually, will anchor Mercy Corps' and NetAid's combined education and outreach efforts.

"It was clear early in our discussions that Mercy Corps and NetAid shared tremendous compatibility in the areas that matter: values, vision, and strategy," explained Dr. Kimberly Hamilton, president of NetAid, who led the merger discussions. "While there are important economies of scale to consider in a merger, we understood immediately that a partnership with Mercy Corps would, most importantly, help us connect many, many more Americans with compelling reasons to reconsider their relationship to people winning against poverty every day."

NetAid's global education experience will provide Mercy Corps with a tested and successful model of applied youth engagement. The reach of Mercy Corps' work in poor communities globally will create more ways for young people in the United States to connect to their peers living under the constraints of poverty. In addition, Mercy Corps field staff will provide real-time, fact-based information about the successes, the set-backs and the progress being made in the fight against poverty.

"Given the disconnect between global social needs and the resources to support sustainable solutions, a merger such as this is a perfect model for the nonprofit sector," said Alfred Wise, president of Community Wealth Ventures. "We knew that both organizations could accelerate their progress by combining extraordinary existing internal assets." NetAid retained Community Wealth Ventures, a social enterprise consulting firm and subsidiary of Share Our Strength, one of the nation's leading anti-hunger and anti-poverty organizations, to explore potential partnerships.

Over the next several months, NetAid and Mercy Corps will develop an integration plan that expands the reach of current programs and lays the groundwork for new initiatives timed with the opening of the New York hunger and poverty center. The ultimate goal is to foster a richer conversation in the United States about global poverty that will, over time, build a more fertile environment for greater action.