Landesa partners with governments and local organizations to ensure that rural women and men living in extreme poverty have secure rights over the land they depend on. Founded as the Rural Development Institute in 1981, Landesa has helped more than 720 million people strengthen legal control over their land in the last five years. When people have secure land rights, they can invest in their land to sustainably increase their harvests and reap the benefits—improved nutrition, health, education, resilience, and opportunity—for generations.