Advent Spiel for 2 December: the Heifer Project

[camwyn]

The Heifer Project's been a favourite of mine for some years now, ever since I heard about them. . . oh, I think at a local Methodist church's 'alternative Christmas market'. They weren't selling goods; they were selling services to other people. Make a donation at the market and you bought a bag of groceries at a food pantry in Paterson, or a teddy bear for an AIDS baby, or something like that. You got a card on which you could inscribe what you'd bought and who it was in honour of. Among the items they offered were a flock of chicks or a share in a cow or water buffalo, which made me blink. They said it was through a group called the Heifer Project and that the animals would be given to farmers either overseas or in poverty-stricken parts of the States. I went home and looked them up.

The Heifer Project was started in the wake of the Spanish Civil War. An American farmer named Dan West. . . well, here, let them tell the story themselves:
A Midwestern farmer named Dan West was ladling out rations of milk to hungry children during the Spanish Civil War when it hit him.
“These children don’t need a cup, they need a cow.”
West, who was serving as a Church of the Brethren relief worker, was forced to decide who would receive the limited rations and who wouldn’t – literally, who would live and who would die. This kind of aid, he knew, would never be enough.
So West returned home to form Heifers for Relief, dedicated to ending hunger permanently by providing families with livestock and training so that they “could be spared the indignity of depending on others to feed their children.”
In 1944, the first shipment of 17 heifers left York, Pennsylvania, for Puerto Rico, going to families whose malnourished children had never even tasted milk. . .
They've been at it ever since.

In practical terms, a recipient of a Heifer Project cow will get an animal from a good breed selected for both adaptability to local conditions and productivity (whether in terms of milk or, eventually, meat). They will receive the cow only after going through animal husbandry training; even the best farmers who have been working in agriculture for a thousand generations may need to update their skill set, after all. And when they breed that cow, they are to give the first calf to a neighbour who needs it- but on the condition that it not be killed, that the neighbour be trained the same way they were, and that the neighbour pass on the gift as well.

Heifer still does cows, of course. But they do other critters too. A donation to Heifer generally takes the form of either the price of an animal, or a share in that animal, or in some cases the price of a flock. Pigs, for example, are quite popular as sources of protein and disposers of vegetable waste; one of the pigs' first offspring gets given away, but after that the recipients are free to put pork on their own tables, or to sell the piglets for money. Or, heck, keep them alive if teaching animal husbandry to future generations is more important. There's sheep, too- one of the sheep projects involves farmers in the Appalachians, right here in the States. There's chicks and goats and water buffalo- don't laugh! Wonderful as modern ploughing equipment may be, there are parts of the world where the geography itself simply won't allow machines to be used for farming. Water buffalo plough well in these areas, give milk, and provide fertilizer as they go.

Not all the animals used in Heifer's work are food animals, I should point out. They also do bees, since honey and beeswax are immensely useful as sources of supplemental income, and it never hurts to have extra pollinators on hand when you're producing plant crops. Llamas are also offered, since they carry small loads in areas where cars wouldn't do and their wool is very popular at market. And as I said, not everything Heifer does is animal based. Their tree projects are aimed at regions where devastating floods and general wet weather stand to ruin the land; the trees they use keep soil in place, provide animal fodder, and improve the local soil quality.

This is probably not the charity for you to support if you are a vegetarian who believes other people should be, too. It's also not a group for people who believe animals shouldn't be kept in captivity. Heifer mostly works with people who don't have the option of foregoing animal protein, and for whom mechanized farming is wildly impractical. The animals the Project gives out are kept alive, but more often than not that eventually translates into some critter winding up on the table, or some product of that critter (eggs, milk, honey, etc.) Keep that in mind; I wouldn't want to deceive you about that. Otherwise, though, I think this kind of work is extremely cool, and worth looking into.

Comments

[lurkergrrl.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is really cool! My mom would be really interested in this -- her bachelor's degree is in Agriculture, and she's still really interested in farming. ^_^ She just went on a mission trip to Mexico and absolutely loved it -- I wonder if Heifer needs volunteers? *goes to check out the website*

[lasa.livejournal.com]

I have always been a huge fan of the Heifer Project. By now my friends know that, and I usually wind up being gifted at least a portion of a sheep every year - being a knitter and all.

About 6 years ago, I spent 4 days on the Heifer Project Farm in Arkansas during the lambing week. It was an amazing experience, even if I /did/ shovel water buffalo manure for an entire afternoon! On the grounds they have a remarkable program set up for youth, where they recreate the living conditions of various peoples all over the world - an African fishing village, a South American farm, a Central American barrio, among others - and the youth actually live there, on the same food rations and the same work load for a weekend. Very illuminating. I wholeheartedly support this project.

Thanks for posting this!

[jenlittlebottom.livejournal.com]

www.oxfamunwrapped.com is like the UK-variant of that. :) I bought my sister a goat for Xmas.

[dancing-moon.livejournal.com]

Hi

I think these posts are a very good idea. Definitely Christmasy =)

Never heard of this Heifer project but it seems like a sound idea; I'm generally in favour of help-others-to-help-themselves charities, because you can't live on donations for ever. The neccessities to start a farm, an education etc are things that last

[camwyn]

You might want to check the spiel for 3rd December, then. Grameen Bank and its affiliated foundation, the Grameen Foundation, are all about the laying of foundations so people can get themselves out of poverty.

[terrie01.livejournal.com]

And, when the llama is old and no good for wool or transport, you eat it!

[lurkergrrl.livejournal.com]

Yum!

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

Ooooh. That sounds like an awesome idea. *runs off to tell parents*