Anok Angok Kon: farmer, mother, community leader
Anok Angok Kon is a farmer in Aguat, a village in Northern Bahr el Ghazal, South Sudan. She's a mother of seven, and chairlady of a local women's group in Gomjuer, the person her community turns to when things get hard.
For the last three years, her harvest failed. Every rainy season, floodwater rushes down from higher ground and across her fields. One year, it destroyed her cattle shed. Her animals drowned inside.
It's the kind of loss that takes years to recover from. But Anok remained hopeful and kept farming.
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Your support can help more families in Aguat build the same resilience Anok has found: training, seeds and protection from the floods that once took everything.
Why harvests are failing in South Sudan
The harvests are failing due to climate crisis, making Aguat's seasons more extreme:
- Wet seasons bring heavier flooding, damaging homes and farms, and killing livestock.
- Dry spells last longer, leaving less time to plant.
- Without enough training or tools, poor weather often means poor harvests: damaged crops, pest invasions, and losses after harvest.
Instability adds to the pressure. Years of conflict in South Sudan, and the ongoing war in neighbouring Sudan, have pushed more families into Northern Bahr el Ghazal. Farmers already lack sufficient tools for cultivation, and more people means the region's limited tools, land and food have to stretch further, causing a hunger crisis.
Women like Anok carry the heaviest weight. They walk long distances to collect water. They run the household. When a harvest fails, it's women who decide whose meal gets smaller.
Growing again with SAADO’s support
With support from SAADO, Christian Aid's partner in South Sudan, Anok joined the Climate Smart Agriculture Programme (CSAP). She learned new farming techniques and received seeds suited to Aguat's short growing windows.
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in terms of food security, "all are vulnerable" in the community, but the project "helps a lot…. [to] improve diet".
She now grows pumpkin, okra, onion and beans. Last year, she bred chickens to sell, earning enough to pay her children's school fees. She's planning to start a Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLA) group with other women, so they can support each other too.
The Aguat community dyke: How 1,100 people came together to build hope
The clearest sign of change in Aguat is a community dyke built by SAADO to protect homes and farms from flooding.
SAADO asked for 200 people to help build it. Instead, 1,100 turned up.
Many didn’t wait to be paid. They wanted flood protection badly enough to volunteer their time, digging and lifting to help safeguard their community. Today, seedlings planted along the dyke help stabilise the soil, while a local committee is responsible for maintaining it.
For Anok, the dyke represents more than flood protection. She hopes it will hold through this year's rains and protect the home and land she has worked so hard to maintain.
What does harvest mean after three years of failed crops?
After three failed harvests, a good one means more than food. It means school fees paid. It means a family fed through the dry months. It means one less thing to fear when the rains come.
We built local dykes as groups because there is hope that the dykes will prevent floods which damage our house, killing our animals.
Find out how you and your church could share hope with this year's Harvest appeal. A good harvest can't be taken for granted, anywhere in the world. But with the right support, even land that keeps flooding can grow again.
Your support this Harvest means farming families like Anok’s can secure their harvests and strengthen their hope in the face of climate shock
