A mother holding her baby, with her children carrying bags of supplies, beside a ministry leader

Relief · Ministry area

Food & Clean Water

First things first, and built to last

Relief · Today

Why this matters

The two needs that come before everything else — enough to eat, and water that is safe to drink.

No education programme succeeds with hungry children in the classroom. No livelihood plan survives a household walking three hours a day for water. Food and water sit underneath everything else we do.

So we treat them as foundations rather than as emergency line items. That means short-term provision when it is needed, and in the same breath the slower work of local food production, water infrastructure and the community committees that keep a pump working in year five.

What we do

The work in detail

Specific activities, delivered by partner churches and community leaders.

Food provision in acute need

Direct food support for households in crisis, sourced locally wherever markets are functioning so that nearby farmers and traders benefit too.

Nutrition for young children and mothers

Targeted support during the first years of life and through pregnancy, when the effects of poor nutrition are permanent.

Local food production

Kitchen gardens, improved seed, drought-tolerant crops, small livestock and training that raises what a household can grow and keep.

Reducing harvest losses

Better drying and storage, so that food grown in a good season is still edible in a lean one.

Water points and repairs

New wells and protected springs where there is no safe source, and — more often — the far cheaper work of repairing the broken ones that already exist.

Community water management

Trained maintenance committees, spare-part supply chains and small user contributions, so a water point is not one breakdown away from abandonment.

How we work

Principles specific to this ministry

Repairing existing infrastructure comes before building anything new.
Every water point has a named, trained committee before it is handed over.
Food is bought locally unless doing so would distort a fragile market.
We plan for the dry season in the wet season.

What we look for

The change we are actually after

Households eat through the lean season without going into debt.
Water points are still working years after installation.
Women and girls reclaim hours previously lost to collecting water.
Children's growth improves where nutrition support reaches them early.

These are described qualitatively on purpose. No statistics have been invented for this website — verified figures will be published in our annual reporting.