In the pages ahead, you’ll read about civil society groups in Ghana that are working to ensure that the natural wealth of their country—its oil and gold—benefits its poorest citizens. You’ll also read about farmers in Haiti’s lush Artibonite valley where they have struggled to keep producing rice in the face of a flood of cheaper imports, mainly from the United States. Learn about the significant progress they are making, with Oxfam’s help, to revitalize their rice industry. As one farmer said, “We were hungry, but that is getting better all the time.”

Our goal is to help people make fundamental changes in a world that often denies the basic rights that many in the US take for granted: protection under the law, clean water, education—the list goes on. Many of you have joined Oxfam because of our collective willingness to engage powerful interests as we tackle the systemic inequalities that keep nearly one in three people worldwide living in poverty. But some of you may not be aware of the depth and breadth of the campaigns we undertake. In the pages ahead, you’ll read about two of them and the years of steady and focused effort required to bring about deep and lasting shifts in policies that have direct bearing on the well-being of millions of people. It’s a long, laborious process, often as exhausting as it is exhilarating, and worth every minute invested.

One campaign—aided by tens of thousands of messages from supporters—has been to help stem corruption in resource-rich countries by encouraging oil, gas, and mining companies to disclose the payments they make to host governments. That’s money poor countries could be spending on clean water, roads, and education that would benefit everybody.

The second campaign—launched nearly a decade ago, propelled forward by a petition signed by a million people, and now so close to its goal—aims to see world governments agree to a global treaty that would regulate the transfer of arms and ammunition across international borders and make the planet a safer place for all of us.

An unflagging commitment to addressing injustice is the thread that binds these two campaigns, and your loyalty and commitment contributed to producing these results. There’s still a great deal of work to do. We need you with us!

Such evidence of a global climate crisis can send development experts into a tailspin, as they search for answers. But solutions may not be as hard to find as we imagine.

We can start by listening.

Listening to local people and learning from the deep knowledge they have about their communities, natural resources, and history lies at the heart of smart development. It’s the first step in empowering people to make the systemic changes that will allow them to build their resilience and ensure a better future for themselves and their families.

For Maribel Cachique and a group of other young mothers working in the Peruvian Amazon (see page 8), a garden of ancestral crops thriving deep in the forest may hold one of the answers to their battle with climate change. Their garden and others like it grew out of conversations fellow Kichwa women had about their need for food security. Hearing their concerns, Oxfam helped launch the pilot project. And now, Cachique’s determination and advice to the other growers offers inspiration to us all: Bit by bit, she says, the Kichwa women are going to move forward.

Sometimes charting a new path is not about leading. Our job here at Oxfam, and yours, is to heed the advice of leaders like Cachique—and to follow.