Author Archives: Donna Stokes

About Donna Stokes

Donna Stokes is the managing editor of World Ark magazine. She has worked for Heifer International since September 2008 when she leaped over to the nonprofit world from a two-decade career in newspaper journalism.

A Happier Home in Cambodia

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Article and video by Chris Kenning, World Ark contributor

Bung Kriel, CAMBODIA—The son of subsistence rice farmers, Chom Thoun grew up in a thatched-roof home on stilts, in a childhood marked by war with the Khmer Rouge, illnesses from poor sanitation and months of hunger each year when the family’s small harvest ran out.

“Our family was very poor, sometimes we didn’t have rice to eat,” said Chom, speaking recently on a shaded bamboo bed under this home, tucked among the rice paddies of Svay Rieng, one of the country’s poorest provinces located near the Vietnamese border.

The fighting had ended by the time he entered his 30s, and he had started a family with five children. But as he hand-plowed the same rice paddies, life was still a daily struggle. Relying on rain-fed rice grown in poor soil on small plot, he did not having enough to feed his family through the year. He was often forced to leave his wife, Toeu, and children to work as a laborer in the city.

While the now 40-year-old farmer still lives in a home without electricity, running water or plumbing, his fortunes have improved significantly in recent years with the help of a Heifer International’s self-help group program that he entered in 2007.

Speaking through an interpreter a few weeks ago on a World Ark visit, Chom said Heifer provided a cow, vegetable seeds, fruit tree saplings and training on how to keep animals and crops healthier by adopting changes such as adding mosquito netting to an animal shelter.

He also joined Heifer’s self-help savings group made up of villagers contributing small amounts for low-interest loans. That allowed Chom to start new vegetables and sugar cane, which they sell at market. In addition to passing on the cow’s offspring to another family in need, Chom also earns money by treating sick animals in the village, a skill he learned through Heifer.

“My life before was hard,” he said. “My living conditions improved; I could buy a bike so my daughter could get to school.”

He said their annual income has more than doubled from $200 a year to $500 a year, allowing them build a new home out of wood with a tin roof. There’s now enough food all year round, because they were able to buy more land for rice. And, fish, eggs or fowl—once a rare treat—are now a nearly daily part of their diet. They even have a small TV powered by a car battery.

They’re just some of more than 8,800 vulnerable Cambodian families that Heifer has helped since 1999 in a country long battered by war and extreme poverty.

Heifer’s programs currently operate in 188 poor rural communities, where they aim to increase food security, incomes and well-being by providing help such as animals and seeds, farmer education, microfinance and a more recent effort to boost basic literacy and math skills.

In Bung Kriel village, home to about 86 families and located in a province known for its low-quality farmland, child malnutrition, illiteracy, distance to markets and health care, and legacy of heavy U.S. bombing in the 1970s, it’s been a huge help, village leaders said.

“It has helped (bring) change for many families,” said Sek Ouk, Bung Kriel’s 69-year-old village chief.

Look for more about Heifer Cambodia projects in upcoming issues of World Ark magazine.

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Playing Hide and Seek with Your Food

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Moe's Close Talker salad

Is your neighborhood far from a proper supermarket and surrounded by inexpensive fast-food outlets with few healthy choices? If so, you may fall into the realm of what many characterize as a food desert.

A website from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows areas that meet the description of such a desert, where low-income families have little or no access to healthy fresh food. The definition: Any census area where at least 20 percent of people are below the poverty line and 33 percent live more than a mile from a supermarket in urban areas and 10 miles from one in rural areas.

But that’s not the whole story, according to an article in The Economist. “Critics note that focusing on supermarkets means that the USDA ignores tens of thousands of larger and smaller retailers, farmers’ markets and roadside green grocers, many of which are excellent sources of fresh food. Together, they account for more than half of the country’s trillion-dollar retail food market.”

The article notes the difficulty in linking food deserts with dietary health. In fact, The Economist article says, both the USDA and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies “agree that merely improving access to healthy food does not change consumer behavior.

“The unpalatable truth seems to be that some Americans simply do not care to eat a balanced diet, while others, increasingly, cannot afford to.”

Though cooking and eating at home is often the best nutritional and economic choice, sometimes convenience wins out. For those out there seeking healthy food that might be hidden in some of those fast-food options, check out this fun website www.goodfoodnearyou.com. It shows you nutritional information from restaurants and/or delis or markets near your ZIP code. You can choose according to distance, lowest fat, lowest calories, lowest carbs or highest protein.

However, you can expect the mirage of healthy food to vanish before your eyes if you choose unwisely. In my area, options included eating half a grilled-cheese sandwich from Zaxby’s (assuming I’d have to share or be wasteful); a garden salad without chicken, dressing or croutons from Burger King (boo!); or my favorite, a classic mild chicken wing (yep, just a wing), without skin or breading (so depressing).

Talk about hard choices. But there are also some happy discoveries to be found such as butternut squash with caramelized onions at Whole Foods Market and the Close Talker Streaker-Style Salad with tofu & black beans from Moe’s Southwest Grill. (It’s worth exploring just for the name alone!)

Happy hunting.

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Help Megan Move Mountains in Haiti with Colorado Climb

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Megan Bean is an 11-year-old fundraising dynamo. Her father is Rob Bean, head honcho for The Big Moo Canoe for Heifer International. He just organized and led a marathon canoe trip in May to raise money for Heifer Haiti’s REACH program. Stay tuned for more about the Bean family in an upcoming issue of Heifer’s World Ark magazine.

Together they’ve raised more than $25,000 in donations. Dad describes Megan as a “fireball of energy and creativity” and said she has been an integral part of Big Moo Canoe since the first efforts back in 2007. “She was adamant to do something of her own this year and thought a hike might be a fun way to raise awareness for Heifer.”

In just a few weeks, Megan will hike Mount Grays and Mount Torreys in Colorado, two 14,000-footers. She plans to take the adventure in early August and will choose the actual day based on weather forecasts for the area.

World Ark: Your fundraising project is very ambitions for an 11-year old, what inspires you to work so hard to help others? 

Megan: Well, it’s pretty simple. I have been raised in an environment where I learned to give generously and care for others graciously. I have wanted to do a 14-er for a while. I really love camping and hiking, and I had heard lots of stories from my parents’ climbing mountains and wanted to make my own project. I had heard a lot about Haiti’s disaster, and a little, but just enough, about Heifer’s REACH program through my dad’s project. I decided to turn my ambition to the aid of others. In the future, I would like to have a Horsetooth for Haiti climb where people could come to the base of Horsetooth Rock, get outside, and hike up the mountain with me in support of Heifer. But I’ll decide that next year. (Horsetooth Rock is just outside of Fort Collins).

Who do you want to help with your fundraising adventure?

My project will help Haiti. I hope to help small towns where aid is less often sent. This might sound a little weird, but I was watching “Oprah’s Next Chapter” and she was with Sean Penn in Haiti. Granted, I’m not sure who he is, but it showed how hard peoples’ lives were even two years later. I hope to help make sustainable living for the people of Haiti so life can get back to maybe a little better than normal. One of my favorite quotes is “Your life is a message, make sure it’s inspiring.”

Please help Megan in her efforts to help the people of Haiti through Heifer gifts of livestock and training. Go to her home page to donate now. We’ll keep you posted here on when she summits and how much she’s raised. Or, follow updates on The Big Moo Canoe’s Facebook page.

 

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In India, a Mother and Daughter Learn Mutual Respect

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Story and photos by Katya Cengel

Suman Kumari was in 5th grade when her parents pulled her out of school. Her father told her she had studied enough for this lifetime.

Moti Meena, right, and her eldest daughter, Suman Kumari, in their home.

“At rebirth from the womb of some other mother, then you can study whatever you want, or to whatever standard [grade] you want,” Laxman Meena told his eldest daughter.

Suman’s mother didn’t argue. She never went to school and cannot read or write. Like her husband, Moti Meena felt it was not important for their daughters to be educated.

Then, three years ago, Moti sent Suman back to school, telling her to study hard so she could help Moti with the family’s finances. Suman adjusted well despite having been out of the classroom for four years. She is now 17 years old and in the 8th grade. Her mother relies on her to read road signs when they travel. Moti herself can now sign her name, but it was not her daughter who taught her this skill, it was the women in her self-help group. The group has transformed Moti’s future and just as importantly the future of her daughter Suman.

Female-centered self-help groups are the basis of Heifer International’s work in India, said Abhinav Gaurav, technical liaison officer for Heifer India.

“The idea is to better the situation for women in a country that does not value them in the same way it values males,” Gaurav said.

Groups of 20 to 25 women meet once or twice a month and are offered various social, educational and economic trainings in addition to a savings and loan program and the support of their peers. While Heifer does supply goats in the region, Gaurav said that development here is not so much about livestock distribution as “transforming people and producing a deeper level impact.”

Moti’s family lives in a one-room thatch-sided home with a dirt floor in the hamlet of Moradi, where Heifer has been working since 2009. Of the 25 families in the settlement, 10 are associated with Heifer. In three years she has become more accepting of the different castes and tribes that populate the region and has saved 3,500 rupees ($70), which she plans to put toward replacing her home’s walls with concrete. Although she cannot remove her savings until she leaves the group, a condition that enables the group to lend money, she can borrow money at low interest rates. It was Heifer’s training on gender issues that convinced Moti and Laxman to put Suman back in school.

“After we received the gender training the whole community put pressure on us to put our daughter back in school,” Laxman said.

Both Laxman and Moti now want their eldest daughter to complete 10th grade. Moti already believes that her daughter is more knowledgeable than she was at her age. But despite all she has learned, Suman remains impressed with her mother’s wisdom.

“I see mother as a role model nowadays because she has gained knowledge and skills,” Suman said. “I want to be like her.”

Moti Meena in her kitchen.

This Mother’s Day, celebrate your mom by helping provide for another mother in need.

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Feeding the World While the Earth Cooks

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Today in Washington, D.C., Arizona State University, the New America Foundation and Slate magazine are tackling the sticky subject of how to feed the world as population swells and climate changes in both extreme and subtle ways to threaten vital crops around the world.

Tune in to hear the conversation and review the agenda on topics including:

“The Collision Course: Rising Demands on a Hotter Planet,” “Will New Seeds Conquer the New Climate,” “Where’s the Beef: Your Hamburger in 2050,” “The Next Green Revolution: Is There an App for That?” and “Business as Usual: Toward Global Adaptation.”

In the session on “How to Avert a Food Crisis,” guided by David Biello of the Scientific American, Hans Herren, 1995 World Food Prize winner and president of the Millennium Institute and USAID climate specialist Ed Carr of the University of South Carolina discuss what can be done now.

“What we don’t need is more food,” Herren said. “We grow enough for 2,500 calories per person now. What we do need is diversity, different varieties of food grown in more places.”

“We cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that created it,” Herren concluded. “We need more production developing countries. In places where we now have food deficits, we can easily double or triple food production and access. We just have to change our thinking.”

Carr reinforced the importance of local knowledge and production of smallholder farmers.

It’s erroneous to ignore local knowledge when dreaming up solutions to food scarcity, Carr said. “When you look at climate trends these farmers are already coping with tremendous variability in climate. Do not underestimate how smart these famers are and consider that they are already adjusting crops based on markets and climate while development experts debate the best way to do it.”

On Twitter? Join the conversation with @FutureTenseNow at #foodfuture.

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Capturing the Faces of Heifer

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It would be impossible to tell the real stories of Heifer participants’ lives without our freelance photographers, a point highlighted by a recent blog post celebrating the work of Dave Anderson, who has traveled to Haiti, Ecuador, Peru, Tanzania and Romania to document the lives of Heifer participants.

I was lucky enough to accompany Dave to Tanzania to visit a Maasai camel project for the Holiday 2010 issue of World Ark magazine. The country director at the time asked us to set aside at least 10 days so he could show us the real work. Visitors are always in such a hurry, he said. They want to see the real work, but they never want to travel more than a couple of hours from the airport!

Dave and I had no such problem. Our itinerary took us from our arrival in Arusha in the northern part of the country, all the way to the south-central plains and then back to Dar es Salaam for departure, nearly 2,000 miles on the road by the time we boarded the plane headed for home. We collected dozens of stories of Heifer work all over the country, best highlighted by this video that Dave captured while on the trip.

We got pulled over for speeding at least four times and stuck once trying to cross a handmade bridge made of large sticks roped together on the way to a blind fish farmer’s house. We walked the last mile or so to the house, with a neighbor woman offering to carry large photography equipment on her head. One hostel we stayed at out in the boonies of Tanzania had cockroaches the size of a child’s tennis shoe that would not be cowed by the waving of an adult-sized flip-flop.

We saw herds of buffalo, giraffes and baboons as well as elephants and other wild critters from the road and had logistical challenges of the amusing variety such as a fire ant attack at a farm built on the steep slopes of Mount Meru and a motel that forgot to dry our laundry so we had to haul a pile of wet clothes around in the car for days after.

Click here for a few behind-the-scenes shots from a blog on the road I posted that shows just how “involved” photographers can be. Just after the first photo in the zero-grazing pen, Dave tipped backwards into the fragrant muck, illustrating just how important efficient laundry services can be.

Do you have any favorite photos from recent World Arks or blog posts? Email us or comment here to let us know what you’d like to see in future World Ark photos.

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Heifer’s Superwoman Going Strong in Tanzania

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Editor’s Note: Acommitment to empower women is embedded in Heifer International’score values for sustainable development. In honor of International Women’s Dayon March 8, this week we’re sharing the stories of Heifer participants who takethe gifts of animals and training and run with them to extraordinary resultsfor themselves and their communities. Through hard work and innovations, eachwoman secures her rightful place in the family, the marketplace and the world.

Photos by Dave Anderson
In my first blog post about Huruma Mhapa while still on thetrip in Tanzania in 2010, I dubbed her “Heifer’s Superwoman” with this introduction:
I dare you to find a Heifer participant who has done morefor her family, her village, her Heifer dairy cows and farm educationthroughout her country and Africa than Huruma Mhapa of Ibumila village in theNjombe district of Tanzania.
In July 1993, after living in poverty in a small mud hutwith her family, she received one dairy cow from Heifer International and itspartner, the Anglican Church of Tanzania, and was trained in the zero-grazingmethod. Today, she’s a regular lecturer at the Sokoine University ofAgriculture in Morogoro, farms 11 acres and cares for four dairy cows, alldescendants of that first cow.
From 2002 to the present, she has trained more than 4,000farmers directly, including those from Heifer projects in other countriesincluding Malawi and Kenya. Many thousands continue to visit her farm to learnabout zero grazing and organic farming.
In 2011, Mhapa won Heifer’s top honor for Women in LivestockDevelopment for all of Africa and was profiled with all the other globalwinners in World Ark magazine.
“The cattle project brought love in our family, improved ourlivelihoods and allowed our three children to go to school. If the cows alsocherish their lives in their new shed I will be very grateful,” Mhapa said. “Iconsider these cows as part of my family. I wake up at 4 a.m. At that time, mychildren are not yet awake, so the first ones to be greeted by me in themorning are the cows.”
Mhapa is a leader, a technical expert in the zero-grazingmethod of dairy farming and organic crop production, and an innovator and communitychange agent. “I can say that the way the men in this village perceive womenhas changed,” Mhapa said. “They see us, the women, as very important and theynow cooperate in increasing the income of our households.”
Her story is not about the one gift of the single cow she received in1993. Instead, it is about what she has done since with her own hard work and business savvy to make the most of that smallopportunity.
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Always There for the Women of Nepal

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A commitment to empower women is embedded in Heifer International’s core values for sustainable development. In honor of International Women’s Day on March 8, this week we’re sharing the stories of Heifer participants who take the gifts of animals and training and run with them to extraordinary results for themselves and their communities. Through hard work and innovations, each woman secures her rightful place in the family, the marketplace and the world.


Photo by Geoff Oliver Bugbee
Sita Poudel counsels women in the village of Belsi.
If a leader can be measured by the achievements of those sheguides and inspires, then the record of Sita Poudel’s lifework is already offthe charts. She received two goats in 1993 and has worked with Heifer International eversince. She started her own nongovernmental organization, the Women’s GroupCoordination Committee in Chitwan, Nepal, which works with nearly 500 women’sgroups in the country. Her warm heart and perseverance show how far two goatsand a passion for helping others can take you.
Meena Chaudhary, of the Prakash Women’s Group in Belsi, saidPoudel would not take “no” for an answer when she came to offer help to thelower-caste group of women. Even after being turned away dozens of times fromthe once extremely poor village, Poudel kept coming back.
“We are where we are today because of Sita’s guidance andsupport,” Chaudhary said. “We have learned from her that money is not the onlything that helps people. It’s the intention to do good and to help others.”
Poudel continues to raise goats, getting up at 4:30 a.m.daily to care for the animals and prepare breakfast for her family beforespending all day, six days a week, working side by side with the women herorganization supports. She said her reward is watching the transformation ofthe women she helps.
“When they smile at me and invite me into their houses andshow me the life they have today because of all my hard work and theirs, itmakes me want to go into a new place tomorrow and start all over again,” Poudel said.
Read more about Poudel in this World Ark article.

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Haiti Mother Never Gives Up

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Editor’s Note: A commitment to empower women is embedded in Heifer International’s core values for sustainable development. In honor of International Women’s Day on Thursday, March 8, this week we’re sharing the stories of Heifer participants who take the gifts of animals and training and run with them to extraordinary results for themselves and their communities. Through hard work and innovations, each woman secures her rightful place in the family, the marketplace and the world.

A refrigerator was hurtling toward Roseline Jean Pierre whenshe jettisoned her 7-day-old daughter Jessie out of the third floor of aPort-au-Prince apartment building during the 7.0 magnitude earthquake thatrocked Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010.
By the time Jessie was tossed into the hands of waitingneighbors, the third floor was more like a first floor, the two floors belowhaving already collapsed. Jessie’s 5-year-old sister made it next, followed byJean Pierre, who jumped just before the rest of the building collapsed intorubble.
“God saved me,” said Jean Pierre, sitting in a field in ruralHaiti a year and a half later.
After losing their home, Jean Pierre and her daughters fledsouthwest to Cance, where her father’s family is from. She received a gray andbrown calf in July as part of a Heifer partnership with the farmingorganization CAPAS.
She and her family are living in the farming organization’soffice for now, but Jean Pierre plans to use the income from selling milk tobuy another cow and eventually hopes to earn enough to build a house.
Though she’s a city girl at heart, she’s adjusting to rurallife and will do whatever it takes to provide for her family. Resilience anddetermination saved her and her daughters once already. Her continued strengthin the face of adversity and change are an inspiration to women everywhere.
Read more about Jean Pierre in the February 2012 issue of World Ark. To donate to the Haiti REACH project, click here.
Story by Katya Cengel
Photo by Geoff Oliver Bugbee
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Honoring Heifer’s Women Participants: Ganga Khanal, Nepal

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Editor’s Note: Acommitment to empower women is embedded in Heifer International’score values for sustainable development. In honor of International Women’s Dayon Thursday, March 8, this week we’re sharing the stories of Heifer participants who takethe gifts of animals and training and run with them to extraordinary resultsfor themselves and their communities. Through hard work and innovations, eachwoman secures her rightful place in the family, the marketplace and the world.


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Video by Geoff Oliver Bugbee and Puja Singh

Ganga Khanal of Jirouna, Nepal describes herself as stubborn, driven and outspoken, traditionally not celebrated qualities in a Nepali woman.

Her fierce spirit grew all the stronger after a heart-breaking early married life full of betrayal and blame.Her first two children were daughters, and her husband and mother-in-law turned on her, blaming her for the lack of a son. Her husband hit her when she spoke up, and her mother-in-law encouraged him. She never had enough to eat.

But she would not accept that life of poverty and pain. She heard about a women’s group looking for a new group of women to receive Heifer animals and knowledge through the practice of Pass on the Gift. Armed with that sliver of hope, she rallied her neighbors.

“I said, ‘Let’s do something. We are very poor people. We lease other people’s goats and raise them. If someone is willing to give us goats for free, why wouldn’t we take that opportunity?’” Khanal said.

Despite bitter opposition from her husband, she formed the Jagrit Women’s Group and received two black and white goats and training in Heifer’s 12 Cornerstones.

“Today I am something,” Khanal said. “I have substance; I have animals; I have crops. … If you have the backup of the whole group, the trust of the group, there is nothing you can’t do.”

Khanal now sits on the executive board of a larger cooperative of women’s groups that owns and operates a commodities store where the women can sell their own produce.

Her husband came around too, a few months after she received her goats and a loan from the group savings. “He started helping me in the farm and with the animals. We were making enough money to get us by.

“I believed what I was doing would result in a bright future for my family,” she said. “So I didn’t lose faith. I didn’t give up.”Khanal is hopeful her efforts will mean a better future for all her six children, four girls and two boys.

“I used to be guilty as well in believing it was more important to educate or provide for my sons than for my daughters,” she said. “But the trainings changed all that for me. Today, my daughter is in the army. My daughter has made me realize and understand that girls are no less than boys.”

Her son, Sudip, learned that same lesson from Khanal. “I have so much respect for these women who have created opportunities for people like me. The future looks bright for us because of our moms.”

To read the full article about Khanal in World Ark magazine, click here. Below, Khanal shares what her life is like now.

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