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CHF International began its agriculture interventions in Zam Zam in 2004, when scores of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), forced to leave their own home towns, had come here seeking refuge. Under this innovative initiative, CHF is working with local farmers to select IDP farmers to work on a portion of their land in exchange for fifteen percent of the harvested crop.

Hadja Idriss Ahmed first arrived to the sprawling Abu Shouk IDP camp outside the rural town of El Fashir in North Darfur in November 2004. Hadja, her husband and five children fled Tawila, their home town several days earlier as the spreading conflict swept through the surrounding countryside. Arriving in Abu Shouk, the family received shelter and food, but conditions in the camp were harsh. Overcrowding made access to water a daily challenge. Hadja was constantly worried about the health of her children; Mona, Hadja’s youngest, was suffering from frequent bouts of diarrhea.

Touring the local wells and hand pumps where people collect water for drinking, cooking and washing, it is immediately obvious that clean water is something this town desperately needs. Much of the water here is filthy and brown, full of what Oxfam water engineers call “suspended solids” – a fancy name for sludge and floating crud. The water from the shallow, hand dug wells just across the border in Chad is especially bad.

Hassanat and Christina may look like no
more than two typical African market women, minding their tiny stalls in a bustling market street on the outskirts of Port Sudan. Yet, as they shuffle through thedust, greeting customers and setting up their wares, the gleam
in their eyes says everything but “victim.” Rather than dwelling on their difficult circumstances, Hassanat and Christina are busy working themselves and their families out of poverty.

Twenty-two-year-old Daniel Riong is a student at Rumbek Secondary School in southern Sudan and a teacher at the nearby Deng Nhial Primary School. But in an isolated community ravaged by 21 years of civil war, multiple famines and endless cycles of disease, no one finds this strange.

John Jal Youl pulls up a pant leg and points to a faded scar on his ankle. "That is where he came out," he says, brushing his hand over a pink circle on his weathered black skin. "The wound burned like a fire."
 

Gaining access to education is no mean feat for children in the remote nomadic communities of Sudan's North Kordofan State, but the challenges are even greater for girls, as domestic duties and traditions pose significant hurdles.

For people living in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan, central Sudan, getting enough clean water has long been a difficult task. Working with ECHO, the European Community’s Humanitarian Aid Department, UNICEF has turned the situation around, building and rehabilitating the region’s water system to ensure more than 110,000 people have access to safe drinking water.