This weekend is Spring Into Action where we are hosting a unique muli-city summit for you to get a deeper understanding of our work. If you can’t make one of the events you can still email volunteer@heifer.org to see how you can get involved in making an impact in your community.

Check out what we’ve been reading this week:

How Much Water Do You Use Every Day? (INFOGRAPHIC) 

Water and food security focus of World Water Day 2012

The Media Map: Who’s Reading What And Where

So, what have you been reading this week?

If you’re reading this then you’ve seen our new Heifer Blog design. It’s very spring like and new! Though we’re still working out some of the kinks of our share buttons, we are really enjoying the new look and feel.

Speaking of spring, have you checked out our Spring Into Action event happening March 24? Across the United States, our volunteers are recruiting other volunteers to become part of the Heifer movement. Just think the affect we all took a little time and started to volunteer with Heifer today! Check it out here: http://www.heifer.org/getinvolved/spring-into-action.

Check out these articles we’ve been passing around the office and let us know how you like the new blog in the comments section:

• FAO calls for new approach to end hunger in Asia-Pacific region
• Food Security Bill Looking Wobbly
• USAID program improving Nigeria’s food security
• The Poverty of Nations

So, what have you been reading this week?

This week, Bill Gates released his annual letter that made the argument that we must keep investing in agriculture research to continue to help extremely poor people build self-sufficiency. The new FAO chief, José Graziano da Silva,  was part of a program in Brazil called “Zero Hunger,” which helped lift 24 million Brazilians out of hunger. With both of these influential leaders dedicated to helping end hunger, is this the year that we will come closer to ending hunger and poverty by working together?

Still need more ideas on how we can end hunger this year? Think about going halfsies:
 
Halfsies: Connecting the Dots from Go Halfsies on Vimeo.

With the second anniversary of the Haiti quake, it’s been a busy week at Heifer HQ. In case you didn’t have time to check out all the articles, here are the links to the blogs that were written about our work in the developing country:

• Haiti Progress in Reach 
• On the Anniversary of the Haiti Earthquake, a message from Heifer International 
• Haiti Worker Recalls Sister’s ‘Resurrection’ 
• One Third of Heifer Haiti’s Livestock Facilities will be Managed by Women

It’s been an exciting week at Heifer headquarters. As part of the social media team at Heifer, I get to read and respond to stories that our fans share with us about why they give Heifer gifts to their family and friends. 

If you haven’t heard, the holiday edition of World Ark is now online. Annie has recapped some of the headline stories of the many families being helped in Zambia with a partnership between Heifer and Elanco, two siblings who worked to raise $5,000 for Heifer and discussion about the Most Important Gift Catalog in the World.

New statistics came out this week about poverty in the U.S. 1 in 15 Americans are now considered poorest of the poor. Though more information will be released next week into the demographics of these numbers, the extreme poverty rate in the U.S. is continuing to climb.

In case you have some extra pumpkins laying around and you aren’t sure what to do with them, check out this week’s How To blog. It gives some examples of things you can do with uncut and cut pumpkins.

Now for articles we’ve been reading around the office:

- Visualizing How A Population Grows to 7 Billion

- Low Fruit, Veg Intake Killing East Africans, Study

- 7 Billion Reasons to Empower Women

- Atlanta Conducts Urban Farm Design Competition 

So what did you think about all of our blog articles this week? Which one was your favorite?