Women and children often have to walk long distances, sometimes 10 kilometres or more, just to find clean drinking water. And of course, they might have to do that at least twice a day. FARM-Africa ensures that the communities we support have access to water, often by teaching them how to dig shallow wells. Improving access to water makes a huge difference to the quality of life, freeing up valuable time for women to focus on other poverty alleviating activities.

FARM-Africa recently started working in Southern Sudan. After a 20 year civil war, the returning refugees and other marginal communities that we work with have no assets, and are literally rebuilding their lives from scratch. One of the ways that FARM-Africa supports communities in Southern Sudan is providing them with seed starter packs so that farmers can quickly start growing healthy vegetables - vegetables that will increase their families nutritional levels and also raise some valuable extra income by selling any extra crops they grow.

FARM-Africa makes a special point of working with some of the most vulnerable members of a community: the poor, orphans, disabled people and also women. Our projects are aimed at improving the livelihoods of the poorest people in the communities in which we work, and this often means female-headed households. Many of our projects start through the formation of women's groups, to enable people to raise their standing in their communities, for example through credit groups.

Dairy goats can be an incredibly useful tool in the fight against poverty. FARM-Africa's award-winning Dairy Goat Project takes high milk-yielding dairy goats and crossbreeds them with hardy local goats. The result is an impressive 4X increase in the amount of nutritious milk that a family can produce every day. And because the goats are kept in specially designed pens they do not deplete the local resources. In fact, farmers often report an increase in their crop yields from using goat manure! By planting special fodder crops for the goats, farmers also ensure that they conserve their precious soil.

Developing new livelihoods for rural African farmers is key to reducing poverty, and helping to preserve the environment at the same time! FARM-Africa runs a number of forestry programmes where the local communities start managing the forests themselves - helping to preserve them as well as learning new ways of making a living from them. This means that they do not have to cut down the forests, but can develop new enterprises such as bee-keeping, tree nurseries, basket weaving and other activities that enable them to preserve the forest, while earning a living. A great solution all round we think!