Landesa Member

Founded as the Rural Development Institute (RDI), Landesa’s work in more than 40 developing countries over the past four decades has improved individual lives, families, and communities.

As a result of our partnerships with governments and other development organizations, Landesa has helped bring secure land rights to more than 105 million families–representing well over 400 million people–in 45 developing countries throughout the world.

In fiscal year 2011 alone, we helped 3.4 million families receive documentation of their legal rights to land, legal aid and education of their land rights, or official recognition of their land tenure.

This transformation—from land insecurity or landlessness to secure rights to land—has boosted agricultural productivity in the developing world by billions of dollars per year, improved health, nutrition and school enrollment in hundreds of villages across the globe, and placed scores of billions of dollars in new land wealth in the hands of the rural poor.