ACF International Network
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Action Against Hunger has developed its water and sanitation expertise over nearly three decades of field work, advancing a number of solutions for populations at risk from water insecurity.
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Central to the targeting of malnutrition, Action Against Hunger extends water and sanitation improvements to communities with little or no access to proper sources.
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Action Against Hunger's programs are sustainable because of our commitment to community participation—to build local capacity and harnesses a population's energy and resources.
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Though strategies may vary, our food security interventions all share a common goal: to fight hunger by preserving and strengthening livelihoods in a sustainable and contextual manner.
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Action Against Hunger’s innovative food security programs offer a broad range of solutions for generating income, boosting food production, and strengthening livelihoods.
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Our comprehensive approach to hunger involves extending water and sanitation services to communities faced with water scarcity, unsafe drinking water, and inadequate sanitation.
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Action Against Hunger occupies a unique place among international organizations: our expertise encompasses emergency relief, longer-term development, and the terrain in between.
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We have developed an effective method to treat acute malnutrition that includes field-tested protocols and nutritional products backed by an international scientific advisory committee.
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Action Against Hunger helps rehabilitate and restock public health infrastructure, fields mobile health clinics, and trains local medical personnel on preventative and diagnostic care.
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Our comprehensive programs address the linkages between disease and malnutrition by coordinating with local expertise and strengthening existing public health systems.
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Where We Work

Update Against Hunger - June 22, 2005
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Field Notes: 

Dear Action Against Hunger Team Member,

Here's the 25th issue of Update Against Hunger, our silver edition.

ACF Field Notes

Humanitarian Action as Balancing Act

To outsiders, our challenges appear straightforward: We see a problem, find a solution, secure the appropriate resources, and fix it.

But problem-solving in the humanitarian world is always complex, and that's not merely because the challenges are often caused by complicated issues. While we make our decisions in close collaboration with partner organizations, we often have to work hard to ensure that humanitarian values and the needs of a particular context and population are properly reflected in program design.

For instance, our programs often take into account restrictions, advice, and opinions from donors; from the donors' governments; from the United Nations; from host governments; from opposition parties within host countries; from local authorities; and from other NGOs. And while at each point of interaction we have to grapple with different viewpoints and aims (e.g., political interests), our principal goal is to ensure that our programs benefit the people we serve. To this end, input from our beneficiaries is the primary consideration in the design of our programs.

In the international relief circus, juggling is one of our most delicate acts as we seek the best ways to assist beneficiaries and to keep all the other actors happy while remaining true to our charter.

Cathy Skoula
Executive Director,
Action Against Hunger (ACF) USA

New from US Headquarter: 

ACF International Network Convenes in Barcelona

ACF executives abandoned our New York offices last week for Barcelona to attend ACF's annual meeting of Country Directors from all our projects around the world. (The event was held in Spain this year to honor ACF-Spain's 10th anniversary.)

Three days of national meetings took place (between Country Directors of the seven U.S.-managed field programs and New York headquarters staff), followed by a three-day international convocation with directors of all 44 field programs and staff from our five headquarters, designed to facilitate information sharing among all participants from our International Network. The international convocation focused on three topics. Day 1: Working together for common strategies. Day 2: Technical and operational expertise: new challenges. Day 3: Human resources policies.

Each year, the confab seeks to reinforce international cohesion around the same goals, to share experiences and new ideas, and to hatch new approaches that will improve the quality of our humanitarian responses. For example, this year one subtopic was the challenge of HIV; another was how we can further the professional development of ACF's staff members.

After the meeting, selected participants have been assigned to write policy papers that will summarize the discussions and be sent to each participant. These papers are meant to be shared with each Country Director's team. If you're reading this newsletter in the field, ask your Country Director what (s)he learned. Information shared at the three-day head-bumping is intended to help all 5,000 members of our team to be more effective in meeting the needs of our 5 million beneficiaries.

News from the field: 

Tsunami Recovery: ACF's Six-Month Report

Six months after the December 26, 2004, tsunami, our work in Sri Lanka and Indonesia has shifted from emergency aid to rehabilitation of affected communities and to the restoration of nutritional and economic self-sustainability for the survivors.

As of May 31, 2005, we had received 18.2 million dollars donated specifically for tsunami relief, and as of April 30 we had spent 5.3 million. Why haven't we spent more? Our efforts, as always, are designed to restore security to disaster victims, and to that end we'll need the remaining money over the next two to three years.

So far, our team of 29 expatriates and 250 local employees has helped 90,000 beneficiaries in Indonesia, while another team of 26 expatriates and 150 local employees has helped 41,000 beneficiaries in Sri Lanka. We've built and rehabilitated hundreds of latrines, showers, washing areas, and water-collection points. We've distributed tons of food and thousands of kits that help beneficiaries maintain hygiene or return to activities such as farming, fishing, and cooking.

In helping displaced victims recover self-sufficiency, we've created jobs for them (e.g., clearing fields, building roads) and given them equipment that they lost to the tsunami but which they need for their work (e.g., seeds, boats) or for maintaining their homes (e.g., pots and pans). These efforts will continue.

Person Profile: 

Profile Rosette Kalehezo

Rosette Kalehezo was born in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and she works there today for ACF as an assistant administrator in charge of human services. Her career, however, has taken her to other continents, and choices she has made in her life make her exceptional among local Congolese.

Rosette is the youngest of three brothers and five sisters, and like them she went through primary and secondary school in Bukavu. Many women in Bukavu, she says, get a college education, but they normally do so after getting married. Rosette went to college first, studying English and African culture. Only then did she marry a local chief whose influential career has taken him to DRC's capital in Kinshasa. They had a son, but she and her husband have since separated, and Rosette has been a single mother, an even rarer occurrence in the Bukavu community. "I am a kind of a rebel," she says with a hint of pride.

Rosette went on to study business administration in Kinshasa and Nairobi, Kenya, then she worked for a Nairobi company that provides translation services. She translated books and conference materials among French, English, and Swahili, traveling as far afield as Spain, Pakistan, and the Seychelles.

Two years ago, however, Rosette's mother died, and her family asked her to move back to Bukavu, which she has done. Walking through town one day, she noticed a job announcement posted on the gates of our offices. Thirteen men applied for the job. Rosette was the only woman to do soand she got it. She's pleased to be working for a relief organization, and she hopes to rise higher in ACF's ranks, perhaps even landing an assignment in another coutnry, either in Africa or elsewhere. She now has a second child, but she's prepared to take her boys anywhere she might be sent. The rebel in her continues to challenge Bukavu's expectations.