History of Project HOPE

Since 1958, we have confronted the world’s greatest health challenges and daunting emergencies. We have responded to hurricanes and earthquakes and the humanitarian consequences of civil war. We were on the frontlines of an Ebola outbreak in Africa and rebuilt creaking public health networks in the Soviet bloc during the Cold War and after the Iron Curtain fell. When deadly tsunamis hit Japan and Southeast Asia, Project HOPE was quick to deploy and stayed for months.

We have built health systems from the ground up and repaired others in the developing world, building a legacy of functioning health infrastructure that will endure for generations. Two million trained health care workers around the world and many hospitals, from Asia to Africa and Central America to Eastern Europe, bear witness to HOPE’s legacy of care.

It all started when Project HOPE’s founder, Dr. William B. Walsh, M.D., was moved by poor health conditions he encountered in the South Pacific, while serving on a Navy destroyer during World War II. In 1958, Dr. Walsh worked with U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in order to charter a U.S. Navy hospital ship for $1/year. A donor contributed $150 to get Project HOPE started and, with the support of corporations and generous benefactors, the ship was transformed into the SS HOPE.

Over the following 14 years, the SS HOPE made 11 voyages to serve the world’s most vulnerable people in every region of the world, providing health care for local communities and building health systems that could renew themselves for decades to come.

Since 1974, Project HOPE has been conducting land-based programs, carrying on the legacy of Dr. Walsh. The spirit of the SS HOPE lives on today through our global and local staff, technical experts and medical volunteers working in more than 20 countries, building the capacity of the health workforce in communities that need it most.