Make a meal out of Harvest Festival

Tearfund’s One Family campaign encourages churches and groups to hold a harvest lunch or supper to remember that millions of people around the world go to bed hungry every night. The money raised will go towards supporting Tearfund’s projects to help families become more resilient to the consequences of bad harvests and unpredictable rainfall.


Tackling the future challenge

In many areas of the world families have no crops to harvest this year. This coupled with the increased cost of food is crippling poor people around the world.
Extreme weather conditions have caused floods, landslides, drought and fires - destroying crops in vast areas of the earth, from Cambodia, China and Pakistan in the east, the Sahel region in West Africa, to Russia and the United States in the west.

As severe weather will likely increase with climate change, Tearfund is working with its partners throughout the world to mobilize entire communities to combat poverty. Tearfund is helping families develop sustainable and ecological farming, such as increasing investments in drought-tolerant and heat-resistant crops and livestock breeding.


One family. Planting hope. Growing futures

In Cambodia, Tearfund together with Wholistic Development Organisation (WDO), is giving ‘hope’ to communities, teaching families how to grow new crops and diversify. Five years ago Tuch Mol only grew rice. But families cannot now grow enough rice to see them through the dry season and risk going hungry for up to six months of the year.

As Mol’s wife, Tol, explains, she sometimes had to take desperate measures:
"When our food has gone I go to the field to find frogs and snails. When I cannot feed my children properly I get very disappointed, as I am their mother."

Now, because of Tearfund and WDO, they grow melons, peanuts, beans, cabbages, pumpkins and cucumbers. These foods are nutritionally rich, meaning the Tuch’s children are healthier and less vulnerable to disease.

The family have been loaned a pig and some chickens. They use them to breed more animals and earn money to pay for the children’s school uniforms and books. Local church leader Pastor Vinn Chhouen and WDO have also set up a community rice bank, which runs a loan scheme to ensure families will always have rice, even if the rains fail. These loans are repaid in rice after the harvest, giving the family not a ‘hand-out’ but a ‘hand-up’.

Tol and Mol still have work to do to become self-sufficient – but they now have hope. As Tol explains: "Before the Christians came I was very poor. But now I feel happy because God has blessed me. I want people in your country to pray for Cambodia – not only for my family but all the people in my country."

This Harvest Festival, Tearfund asks Churches and groups to pray for harvests around the world and support its campaign to tackle poverty by hosting a Harvest lunch or supper in aid of the appeal.



On the web: www.tearfund.org/onefamily