CEFA's operations are guided by the principle of full responsibility of the directly interested population and of continued effectiveness of the projects.
This is achieved through coordinated efforts and not with unilateral actions, often limited to mere transferring of funds and money.
CEFA excludes from its actions projects of pure direct aid, projects that is which do not take into consideration the involvement of the benefitting population and the technical formation of locals able to responsibly manage the project prolonging in time its sustainability.
Even if situations requiring emergency aid arise, CEFA has always strived to balance the urgency of immediate assistance with operations aimed at the re-affirming of the local population's involvement and at pacification, giving birth to projects that have laid the basis for a continuity and a recover founded on full-fledged operations of development, which can be activated at the very moment the situation of emergency ceases.
For this reason, CEFA constantly encourages the creation and the strengthening of local organisations to plan and work with to coherently face the problems which need urgent resolving.
CEFA considers the work and identity of the volunteers and expatriates that operate in the projects as a vital resource of the projects for cooperation and development.
On an operational and programming level, CEFA's choices are based on a few fundamental points:
 

• Giving priority to fighting against hunger, through the attainment of nutritional sustainability
• Eliminating poverty from the rural agricultural areas most in need, favouring the choice of operating with integrating projects and complementing projects for rural development with combined actions on a social-educational, health and energetic level
  
• Concentrating the projects in a few regional areas or bordering states to favour the usage of experience and know-how gained in similar areas
  
• Maintaining a constant participating process in the program's choices, with the direct involvement of the representatives of the local populations involved
  
• Developing concrete and feasible projects which can be completed and can stimulate managerial capacities on the part of the locals in a relatively short time frame