Our Sectors
International development involves working across a range of complex and interwoven issues. CHF focuses on the following sectors in the communities we work in:
Climate Change Adaptation
Climate Change Adaptation efforts support communities—and farmers especially—to be less vulnerable to climate related disasters like droughts and floods. Drought resistant seeds and techniques that lock moisture in the soil can help crops thrive in areas where there is a drying trend.
Disaster Risk Management
Disaster Risk Management entails helping communities to reduce the risks associated with natural disaster, helping to support them when disaster strikes, and helping to rebuild in the aftermath. When a disaster destroys the crops of a farmer living in poverty, it can be crushing for him and his family. CHF helps rural communities in developing countries to weather disasters like floods or droughts by making them more resilient.
Food Security
Food Security has long been at the core of our work. We work with families to increase their knowledge, asset base and savings. We also introduce more nutritious crops, improve their production and develop other means of income to increase resiliency if farmers' crops fail.
Gender Equality
Gender equality is important to ensure that men and women have access to the same opportunities. The full realization of women's and girls' rights are important goals in themselves, but they are also keys to building and sustaining rural livelihoods.
Market-led Development
Much of CHF’s work is with vulnerable populations who are going hungry because they don’t have enough food to eat. Market-led Development is the exciting next step—when families’ resilience has been built up to a point that they can move beyond meeting their basic needs to build on their livelihoods and increase their incomes. The money they make can keep their children in school, help to provide medicine and meet other family needs.
Maternal and Child Health
Maternal and Child Health is addressed through better access to nutrient rich foods for mothers and young children, improved maternal and reproductive services and increased prevention and treatment of diseases that disproportionately affect mothers and young children.
CHF in other areas
CHF also works in a number of other areas, including supporting those affected by HIV/AIDS, natural resource management, peace building and conflict resolution, capacity building and social and community development.
Public engagement is also an important part of our work. CHF’s Global Education Program, for example, is active in schools across Canada, helping to bring global issues to life in the classroom and to foster global citizenship amongst Canadian students. CHF also helps to improve development results by sharing experiences and lessons learned through its projects through a number of policy forums.
