Farmers Training Farmers Transforms Lives

“With what Food for the Hungry taught me, I have now expanded to two acres of land.” —Alabi.

War ravaged Sudan so long that the country was practically destroyed. After the war, refugees returned home to find it nearly impossible to farm that land. Life was a daily struggle for survival.

Alabi toiled hard to grow vegetables on his one-acre land. He heard that he could learn how to farm more land through Food for the Hungry and soon began attending workshops. He showed such a keen interest that he was selected among 60 other farmers to be trained as a trainer of farmers.

Food for the Hungry provided Alabi with a treadle pump to make irrigating his land easier. “After seeing the usefulness of the treadle pump, I used my little savings to buy a bigger water pump,” he says. He also received vegetable seeds and fishing equipment, and he now uses a 5-liter petrol pump to irrigate his land.

As a “model farmer,” Alabi has trained 20 other farmers. This is how the program has spread so quickly, transforming the lives of 7,200 families along the Sobat River.

What We Do

Agriculture & Environment: Seed and tool distribution, training farmers through demonstration farms, diversification of crop varieties, distribution of fishing equipment, environmental awareness, reforestation.

Child Development & Education: Training teachers, promoting improved health/hygiene practices, developing supporting community bodies, building primary schools, providing school materials, school feeding program.

Church Development: Adult literacy program, training in basic education such as reading and writing, biblical teaching.

Food for the Hungry began working through partner organizations providing emergency relief activities in Southern Sudan’s Upper Nile State in 2001. We become more independently involved in late 2004 and our work has since spread across the Upper Nile and Jonglei States.

Sudan is recovering from over two decades of civil war that destroyed the country’s infrastructure, displaced 4 million people, and caused 2 million deaths. Food for the Hungry is helping rebuild the infrastructure and addressing food security, clean water, health, nutrition, education, and many war-related social issues. Most children don’t have access to an education. Food for the Hungry is responding by training teachers, building schools, offering lunch to students during the school day, and helping parents and grandchildren also receive an education. We see education, along with church development, as key ways to help the country rebuild its economy, infrastructure and social institutions.