Feeding Families Through the Dry Season
When the rains fail, food insecurity spikes. Our Hunger Alleviation team shares how they adapted distribution routes and partnered with local farmers to keep 400 families fed.
Programme Team
Hunger Alleviation Programme
The dry season in the North West Region of Cameroon typically runs from November to March. For smallholder farming families, it is the hardest stretch of the year — harvests are in, stores are finite, and the next planting season feels far away.
In 2024, the dry season arrived earlier than expected, and with it, a spike in food insecurity that our Hunger Alleviation team had to respond to quickly.
The challenge was not just supply — it was logistics. Three of our regular distribution points had become inaccessible due to road conditions, and two of our partner farmers had experienced partial crop failures. We had to adapt.
“Food security is not just about calories. It is about a family's ability to think beyond today — to plan, to hope, to invest in their children.”
"Food security is not just about calories," says the programme coordinator. "It is about a family's ability to think beyond today — to plan, to hope, to invest in their children. When that is threatened, everything else suffers."
The team worked with local community leaders to identify alternative distribution points and recruited additional volunteer drivers. They also reached out to farmers in adjacent areas who had experienced better harvests, negotiating bulk purchases that supported local agricultural economies while filling the supply gap.
Over the course of the dry season, the programme reached 400 families across six communities — distributing food parcels containing staples, protein sources, and cooking oil. Alongside the distributions, the team ran three agricultural training sessions focused on dry-season farming techniques and water conservation.
The results of those training sessions are already visible. Several families who attended have begun small dry-season gardens, reducing their dependence on distributions and building food resilience for future seasons.
The programme is not designed to create permanent dependency. Every distribution is accompanied by a conversation about longer-term food security — what the family is growing, what support they need, what skills they want to develop. The goal is always to make the next distribution unnecessary.
