No more skipping meals

Bad harvests and high food costs made life difficult for Affini's family

Madam Affini, a maize farmer living in Ghana, has worked the land all her life, relying on her community’s indigenous farming knowledge and skills. These techniques, locally adapted over centuries, are now threatened by the negative effects of climate change.  

Most times, the family yields were low, and so were their earnings. Food was hard to access, and education for their seven children was almost unaffordable. She and her husband struggled to support their family, especially when his health began to fail. 

Affini on the land. Today, she has doubled her yields and her family is food secure.

Help came just in time

Then in December 2021, Affini’s son John became a sponsored child through Canadian Feed The Children (CFTC). He and his siblings received everything they needed to go to school, and the opportunities for their family didn’t stop there. 

Thanks to donor support, Affini joined a community agricultural training program, where she learned critical new techniques to increase her yields, including farm/crop budgeting. 

“One of the greatest learnings I am so excited about is how to do a farm/crop budget as a guide to determine the type of crop and land size to cultivate. Before, I never considered this.” 

With this knowledge, she calculates her production costs ahead of time and avoids financial trouble. The result? 

No more skipping meals, thanks to donor support

This success could not have come at a better time. Sadly, Affini’s husband passed away after a long illness, leaving her to raise the children on her own.  

Still, Affini has hope for the future. The higher yields led to higher income, which means that she can now afford to send the children to school easily. She is also secure in the fact that her children no longer go hungry. 

“We have enough food to eat throughout the year. No more skipping meals, and sometimes going to bed on empty stomachs.” 

Affini is thankful for the partnership of CFTC donors in helping build her family’s resilience to the challenges they face: