Combating Hunger

Action Against Hunger's Programs

ACF has pursued its vision of a world without hunger for three decades, combating hunger with innovative, lifesaving programs in nutrition, food security, water and sanitation, health, and advocacy:

Nutrition Programs
Action Against Hunger’s nutrition programs treat and prevent acute malnutrition. Launched most often during times of crisis, our programs center on the evaluation of nutritional needs, the treatment and prevention of acute malnutrition, technical training and support for local staff, and capacity building with national ministries and government structures. The contexts for our programs can be as varied as the crises: from rural mountain villages, to ethnically divided cities, to the confines of overcrowded relocation camps for internally displace d peoples.

Water, Sanitation, & Hygiene Programs
Action Against Hunger’s integrated approach to hunger involves extending water and sanitation services to communities faced with water scarcity, unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation, and poor hygiene: We truck water into affected communities during emergencies, decontaminate wells and install hand-pumps. Employing sophisticated geophysics, we locate water resources and tap aquifers. We protect natural springs and pipe water into villages and health centers, and rehabilitate damaged infrastructure to ensure access to adequate sources of clean water. We build latrines, bathhouses and introduce basic sanitation infrastructure to keep communities hygienic.

Food Security Programs
Action Against Hunger’s food security programming forms a continuum with the work we do in nutrition. While our therapeutic nutrition programs restore to health individuals suffering from acute malnutrition, our food security programs prevent future outbreaks by supplying needed inputs (seeds, fertilizers, tools, fishing nets, etc.), introducing new techniques, and fortifying coping mechanisms and livelihoods through training in income-generating activities such as farming, gardening, animal breeding, and food conservation. Our food security programs put people on the road to self-sufficiency.

Health Programs
A vicious circle exists between disease and malnutrition. A malnourished child is more vulnerable to diseases than a well-fed child. A sick child, weakened by illness, often becomes a victim of malnutrition. It is therefore necessary to fight disease to combat hunger. We set up mother and child health centers to provide immunization and pre/post-natal care. Our public health programs train medical staff, provide medicine, monitor and control epidemics, and rehabilitate clinics.

Advocacy Programs
Action Against Hunger works where populations face routine violations of fundamental human needs—access to food, drinking water, land and livelihoods. Advocacy strategies enable us to alert, inform, and influence decision-makers and political actors by packaging and delivering our field expertise, analysis, and recommendations to key stakeholders—publicly or confidentially, depending on the sensitivity of the context. These advocacy strategies allow our agency to address the underlying causes of hunger while delivering direct assistance to those in need.