This year, over 18 million people in the Sahel region of West Africa were affected by a severe food crisis caused by drought, a failure of several crops, and sharp rises in food prices. The lives of over 1 million children were at risk from severe malnutrition. Communities across the Sahel suffered (and malnutrition rates remain dangerously high) but a major humanitarian operation, acting earlier than ever before, managed to protect the lives and livelihoods of millions of people.

Oxfam played a major part in this effort. We provided urgently needed assistance to over 1 million people throughout the year. Over 600,000 of our supporters worldwide joined us in campaigning to raise the alarm and to mobilize the international community into action.

At the end of 2012, good rainfall and better harvests have provided some relief. Cereal production is 13 percent higher than last year, but this does not mean the crisis is over. Food prices remain high and many farmers were unable to take advantage of the better rains to plant their crops. Malnutrition rates for children remain above emergency levels in many parts of the region. Millions of people still require sustained support to recover from the crisis, to rebuild their assets and livelihoods, and to be able to support their families.

As well as dealing with the immediate challenges of helping people recover, we need to work together to tackle the underlying causes of food crises in the Sahel. Even when the harvests are good, 230,000 children die of malnutrition-related causes each year. Oxfam is dedicated to supporting small-scale farmers so they can produce more food, supporting the incomes of the poorest people through cash-for-work programs, and building systems of food reserves. These are just some of ways we can help to build the resilience of communities to future shocks, and avoid crises in the future.

Organized by the Alliance for the Defense of Rural Women’s Rights and Oxfam’s GROW campaign, the San Salvador event was an opportunity for women like Henríquez, a mother and small farmer, to present their demands to members of the National Assembly and government officials.

What Henríquez is fighting for is good and healthy food for her and her family, and a sustainable way of producing it.

“If I have food security, I have it all: a variety of healthy food, land, physical health—my children and grandchildren won’t fall sick because they eat healthy— and education,” said Henríquez.  “To me, sovereignty is the guarantee we have to food security [and to] be the owners of our land, our lives.”

Thanks to the training she has received from different institutions, Henríquez now knows how to make organic fertilizer, conserve soil, and work with bees to make honey.

She also benefits from a government program that provides the poorest families with about 100 pounds of fertilizer and two pounds corn seeds. But from Henríquez’ point of view, that doesn’t add up to food security, because when the program ends, the situation will be the same as before. What rural women need, she said, are native seeds which will guarantee sustainability by not only producing crops, but a new round of seeds for planting the following season.

Seed variety isn’t her only worry. Small farmers like Henríquez also face severe challenges from increasingly unpredictable weather.

“This year we lost our crops because of the drought. Last year we lost the whole bean crop because of Tropical Depression 12E,” said Henríquez. That storm dumped five feet of rain in nine days. “I took a loan to invest again, and when this (the drought) happened, I was crying because I didn’t know how to pay back the loan. Thank God the bank came to study my case and canceled my loan.”

Despite the hurdles she and her fellow rural farmers are confronting, Henríquez is confident that all the work they do as part of Alliance for the Defense of Rural Women’s Rights will bear fruit.

“If we go back to using native seeds, we can produce more and more permanently,” she said.” If we have irrigation systems to store water for the dry season, if we have access to information to what is happening in our country—economy, education, health—access to knowledge about soil conservation and how to conserve the environment, than we will have everything we’re all longing for: a dignified live and health.”

Henríquez speaks with the authority of an empowered and independent woman. She is convinced that by speaking out and engaging in the fight for women’s rights, change will come.

“Even if I don’t get to see the changes I’m fighting for, others will, and that gives me great satisfaction,” she said.

Last year thousands voted via mobile phones for the winners of Tanzania's national competition, whose stories were shared with about 25 million people via TV and the media. This year’s winners will also be determined by public voting, and will be announced on World Food Day, October 16.

Below, Oxfam’s Mwanahamisi Salimu profiles one of Tanzania’s 15 Female Food Hero finalists, Sister Martha Waziri. Read about the other finalists on Oxfam’s East Africa blog.

Everywhere I travel in Tanzania I meet women who work the land, but are unable to own or inherit it because of cultural restrictions. In Kondoa district in Dodoma I met a remarkable woman, Sister Martha Waziri, who was determined to change this.

Now 45 years old, Martha began her campaign to reclaim land in 1984. As a young woman she began her calling in the Catholic Church, enrolling in Catholic schools but forced to drop out three times due to ill health. Disheartened and landless, and with no hope of inheriting land from her parents, she saw a possibility to claim a wide sand-ridden seasonal furrow on the border of her village.

The land was completely barren and none of the men wanted it. But not everyone shared 17-year-old Martha’s vision, and when she asked the local authority if she could use it, they laughed at her.

“I became an object of ridicule to other villagers, and when my first attempt to reclaim land failed it was a bonus to them,” she recalls.

Eventually, though, she managed to claim 18 acres of that land. As both a farmer and a pastoralist, she now cultivates 9.5 acres of this land, growing sugarcane, maize, sweet potatoes, cassava, bananas, and a variety of beans. She also rears eight goats and 26 chickens.

She has reaped the economic benefits of her initiative, but has also become a beacon of change in the village. More than 300 villagers, organized into five groups, have now emulated her.

Donasian Kassian, a fellow villager, told me: “When we joined Sister Martha in reclaiming sand-ridden furrows, people dubbed us mad. But 28 years ago this place was a huge useless canal. Today we eat sugarcanes, maize and beans from this land.”

Following her religious calling, Sister Martha has supported 12 orphans and vulnerable youth over the years. Her farms have secured food for her extended family and generated a reliable income to build 10 rooms that the orphans can call home, and from where they can pursue their dreams.

Sister Martha’s success has not been without challenges. She says her first experience of climatic changes was when her fishpond dried up as water levels in the area decreased. She says the land has become increasingly dry, affecting her banana farm most of all.

Sister Martha is not an agro-science expert. She doesn’t use high-tech machines. But this extraordinary woman from an ordinary rural community has made a substantial contribution to conserve her environment and made a remarkable difference in the lives of her fellow villagers. I cannot acknowledge her in any better way than to call her a Female Food Hero.

“It is hard not to be able to feed your children,” says Adama Diallo.  “You can’t be at peace. You can’t sleep at night.”

Diallo, who lives in the village of Tankanto Escale, Senegal, is no stranger to hunger. Each year in the run-up to the fall harvest, those who depend on agriculture experience a lean season, when the last of the stored food runs out and they must cope as best they can—reducing their meals to a minimum while they eke out an uncertain income from day labor, trading, and in some cases mining for flecks of gold.

But this year, the lean season in Senegal—as in much of the western Sahel—began months early, and the consequences have been harsh. More than half a year on a sparse diet of millet and rice has left many children severely and visibly malnourished. And farmers, many of whom have had to sell off their labor-saving equipment and draft animals to buy food, face the difficult task of cultivating crops while hungry and fatigued.

Diallo’s own story is not unusual: after the disastrous harvest of 2011, her stocks of food ran out quickly, and she resorted to a hand-to-mouth existence as a trader in the marketplace, beginning each day with no money and only borrowed goods to sell, and ending with—if she was lucky—enough food to get through another day.

“If the food is not sufficient,” she says, “we only give it to the children.”

Diallo’s struggles didn’t go unnoticed: Oxfam’s partner FODDE (in English, Forum for Sustainable Indigenous Development) included her in a program to distribute cash to the people most in need in this emergency. So recently she traveled to a credit union in the nearest large town, presented her cash voucher card and ID, and received enough money—provided by Oxfam—to feed a household of 10 people for a month (about $8 per person).

Cash buys food—and more

Why distribute cash rather than food during a food crisis?

It is a surprising fact that in the midst of a food crisis, marketplaces may be overflowing with food. In the Kolda market, for example, which serves Tankanto Escale, some local farmers – despite the crop failures—have managed to gather or grow a few items for sale. They ran out of rice months ago, but traders have filled that gap and many others by importing goods from other regions.

As long as food is available, there’s no need for an aid provider to undertake the costly and time-consuming process of shipping it in. Yet people who have lost their harvest—and with it their main source of income—may not be able to afford the food that’s there. For that, they need cash.

Cash payments quickly go to work in the local markets, benefiting not only the people who receive the money directly but also the local farmers and vendors they buy from.

And cash provides flexibility. A food distribution might involve fixed rations of beans and grains—the non-perishables that can travel long distances— but people who receive cash can buy a variety of foods, including eggs, fresh fruit, and vegetables. Furthermore, those who have pressing medical concerns can make the choice to spend some of their money on doctors and medicines.

So in southern Senegal and some of the other crisis-affected regions, Oxfam is focusing not on providing food but on providing the means to purchase the foods and critical services that are available locally.

There was enough for everyone

Diallo used her first payment to buy rice, soap, and cooking oil. “Once we received the cash, there was a big change,” she says. “Before, we ate twice a day, but never enough. The children ate three times a day, but it never filled them. After the payment, there was enough for everyone.”

The money not only helped her meet immediate needs—it released her from the daily imperative of earning money in the marketplace, so she has had a chance to plant her fields. Which means that if this season’s promising rains continue, she will likely have a harvest in October or November that will help her get back on her feet.

“Now I have peace,” she said, “and I am sleeping well.”

Read blogs about Oxfam’s cash and public health programs in Senegal.
Read about Oxfam’s response to the food crisis throughout the western Sahel.

Donate now to the Sahel food crisis fund.

On distribution day in the village of Louga, women and children sat patiently, waiting for their names to be called as workers carefully measured each family’s allotment. Here, every grain is precious. Though Oxfam has selected the most vulnerable villagers to receive the food—widows, divorcees, and people caring for orphans—in reality the sorely needed calories will be shared widely among many. It’s one of the survival strategies common in Louga, where the homes sit close together along dusty paths and the temperature soars to 104 degrees.

“Solidarity here in this community is very strong,” says Khadidja Idriss, a mother of six children. She shared with 10 other families some of the food she received on distribution day, which included 75 pounds of corn, 9 to 11 pounds of beans, a little more than two quarts of oil, and close to a pound of salt.

“My neighbors have virtually nothing either, but they will even feed my children if I’m out. We help each other, regardless of how little we have,” Idriss says. “This is how we survive.”

Before the distribution, Idriss , who suffers from increasing pain in her legs, had been struggling to find enough food for her family. Meals consisted of corn flour mixed with water, and a sauce made from leaves gathered by her children.

“The children often don’t manage to sleep and they cry because they are hungry,” said Idriss. “Sometimes I have no words of comfort for my children. I boil water with a bit of salt for them to drink, which will fill them up.”

But there is no comfort like food, and when Idriss learned that her family had been selected for the distribution, she could hardly wait to convey the news.

“I told my children straight away and they were so happy and joyful and haven’t talked about anything else since,” she said.

The day before the distribution,  a neighborhood child, propped near the doorway of Adoaga Ousmane’s home, chewed on a pit from a piece of fruit . The fruit was long gone, but the chewing helped stave off hunger. For Ousmane, caring for a house full of children and grandchildren, hunger has been no stranger. Her family, too, was among those selected to receive the monthly rations. And like Idriss, her share went far beyond her own threshold.

“I shared the food I received with three other families,” said Ousmane. “I can’t eat my food while other people go hungry. We always share if we can. There is a strong feeling of solidarity in the village. I have to help others who are in need as they would help me if I asked.”

That’s why an Oxfam America emergency response launched in La Pelota last October sought not only to meet people’s immediate needs, but to help them mitigate the risks of their community for the future.

When it rains hard, La Pelota is one of the first communities in the area to flood, in part because a vigorously growing plant called la ninfa clogs the local waterways. The plant is a sign of another problem people face: poor infrastructure for sanitation. Most families rely on pit latrines whose contaminants feed the growth of la ninfa.

In October, Tropical Depression 12-E hit. It rained for almost two weeks straight. On one side of La Pelota the lake overflowed, and on the other side its natural drain spilled its banks.

“It began to rain quite a lot. Little by little, the lake drained, but then the water level rose as it continued to rain,” said Juan Francisco Flores, a 32-year-old community member. “The lake doesn’t flow fast enough through the channel. The water backs up and that’s what floods the community… The stream was flooding on one side and the lake on the other. We were isolated.”

The response from the community to the flooding was well planned and evacuation was timely, due to preparedness work that had been done by Oxfam partner Fundación Maquilishuat (FUMA), in recent years. However, damage to crops was severe.

Together with FUMA and the World Food Programme, Oxfam America launched a food-for-work initiative that not only helped families in La Pelota survive in the first months after the emergency, but reduced the risk they would face in the future. FUMA and citizens of La Pelota decided to clean out the channel to allow the water to flow more easily and prevent flooding. Oxfam provided material to do the work, FUMA provided monitoring and technical assistance, and the families carried out the work.

The project provided people with 100 pounds of corn, 33 pounds of rice, 20 pounds of beans, and a gallon of cooking oil, in exchange for 80 hours of work a month.

“The food-for-work project has been well received. It was very effective to implement this project at this time of year, when people usually don’t have work,” says Sandra Quinteros of FUMA. “There’s been a selection process for the FFW program, with several criteria—that they lost at least 50 percent of their production; that they live on less than two dollars a day; that they have many children or older adults to care for; that they are day laborers; and that they are willing to work.”

The food-for-work project has been implemented in 99 poor communities like La Pelota, in 15 municipalities throughout El Salvador. A total of 3,800 families earned a three-month supply of corn, beans, rice, and oil for a family of five, enabling them to recover from their losses and now live in better prepared communities.