CHFI takes a unique and proven approach in order to fulfill our mission.
The “One New Village at a Time” Approach
CHFI concentrates its efforts on the development of a single village until tangible results are achieved. We tailor our programs and activities to the specific needs of the selected village. Progress and impact achieved is expected to attract other villages to start implementing CHFI’s programs. Villages enrolled in CHFI’s programs are referred to as C-Villages.
The “3S” Strategic Framework
CHFI’s strategic framework is characterized by three stages: (i) Strengthening the body, (ii) Strengthening the mind and (iii) Strengthening the community.
Strengthening the Body
Each village CHFI partners with (or “C-village”) is a poor village where the majority of men, women, and children are in poor physical health caused by hunger, disease, lack of shelter, unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation and fuel shortage. Strengthening the Body aims to help villagers restore their physical health, giving them strong bodies so they can do the work of building a strong community. This effort includes:
- Providing food and nutritional supplements as needed.
- Helping all villagers to secure adequate shelter and clothing.
- Bringing health services including vaccines and medicine to the village.
- Assisting villagers in laying the groundwork for health-promoting sanitation practices.
CHFI and the C-VA support these activities with a vigorous awareness campaign designed to emphasize villagers’ responsibility for their health and encourage self-reliance, not dependency on aid.
Strengthening the Mind
History has demonstrated that a nation’s fate hinges heavily upon the mentality of its people. CHFI is of the view that the mentality of the rural poor is a critically important factor to be considered in the poverty and hunger debates. Indeed, poverty can perpetuate itself over time by creating a mindset that is fed with self-convincing beliefs about self and the world and that limits perceptions, choices, motivations and behaviors.
Strengthening the mind aims to bring about a positive change in the mindset of the village people – a mindset that prevents these people from escaping their impoverished conditions and that leads them to the following:
- the belief that they are born poor, will eventually remain poor all their life and will die poor;
- the loss of self-confidence and the failure to identify both their abilities and weaknesses and build on them, and do the best with what they have;
- the failure to work hard and diligently with a self-help approach towards the betterment of their livelihood; and
- the development of aid dependency and related implications for active participation in own development efforts.
Strengthening the mind consists of:
- Eradicating self-defeating mindset among rural communities;
- Creating among villagers awareness of their own potential to change for better the course of their life;
- Bringing the rural community members to recognize that the components of their own potential include not only the existing human and natural resources but also social values, traditions or cultures that have endured the test of times; and
- Enhancing villagers desire to realize their own potential and to work actively to that effect so as to free themselves from the shackles of poverty and hunger.
Strengthening the Community
CHFI is of the view that people are the most important resources in any development intervention and that there is no reason why a rural community should rely eternally on aids rather than on its people to meet its basic needs. CHFI believes that African villagers, if empowered, will be capable to move successfully the agenda of their own sustainable development and will do more than just satisfying their basic needs.
Strengthening the community means:
- Engaging the rural communities in the formulation and implementation of long-term integrated agricultural and rural transformation programs tailored to the specific needs of each community
- Ending the chronic and or recurrent inability of the village community to meet its basic needs;
- Succeeding in effecting a sustainable modernization of Agriculture and rural transformation for the betterment of the livelihood of the rural communities; and
- Becoming a model and a partner for hunger and poverty reduction.
Drivers of CHFI’s Agenda and Success
The strategic priority areas that drive CHFI’s agenda and success are community mobilization and empowerment, C-villagers Association, C-Fund, Support from the government or local authorities, Partnership, Education and Training, and Technology.
