Tag Archives: Clinton Global Initiative

Clinton Global Initiative: Designing for Impact

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It has been a whirlwind of events lately. First, I had an amazing three-week visit to Asia (India, Nepal, and Cambodia), then I traveled to California to be a part of Heifer International’s first “Beyond Hunger: A Place at the Table” event, and last week I was honored to attend the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) in New York.

Young girls in Haiti participating in a Heifer International project

Project participants of Heifer International's goat value chain program proudly display their work. Photo courtesy of Heifer International

CGI is an extraordinary event that brings together an amazing group of individuals working in different fields to “turn ideas into action.” Heifer has had a presence at CGI since its inception in 2005. Last year was my first time to attend, and Heifer was privileged to present our Commitment to REACH: Rural Entrepreneurs for Agricultural Cooperation in Haiti.

Heifer International breeding center in Haiti

Heifer International's Tet Kole breeding center breaks ground near Port-au-Prince as part of its commitment to develop livestock micro-enterprises in Haiti. Photo by Dave Anderson, courtesy of Heifer International.

With our CGI Commitment, Heifer is working to strengthen social capital, support community building and develop rural enterprises in Haiti. REACH will improve the economic opportunities of 20,250 rural households over a period of five years in Haiti through Heifer’s proven approach of sustainable development. We are working with farmers to train them to develop their own livestock micro-enterprises.

The theme of this year’s CGI meeting was “Designing for Impact.” The charge is that we all need to be more efficient, more effective, and making the best uses of our resources. Heifer is already moving in this direction and has defined priorities that will help us increase our impact to help more families than ever before. In addition to reaffirming Heifer’s Commitment to REACH, I also looked this year to connect with potential partners for our some of our largest projects that would support our efforts in turning small farmers into business people on a scale large enough to transform entire communities and industries. We currently have successful partnerships, including Green Mountain Coffee, DANONE, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

An additional topic at CGI was gender equity. If you have read any of my previous blog posts, you know that women’s empowerment is an important and recurring theme for Heifer. Our approach, impact and success demonstrate that when we work in partnership with women, families benefit, communities advance and positive change occurs exponentially.

On a final note, I’d like to congratulate President Clinton on an amazing event. The energy was captivating, and I can’t wait to build on the relationships that have been formed.

Heifer and Others Invest in Haiti

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This post was written by Heifer Vice President of Philanthropy Cathy Sanders.

 

I recently spent five days in Haiti at an Invest in Haiti Conference organized by the Clinton Foundation and the InterAmerican Development Bank. More than 900 people from 35 countries attended along with Heifer Haiti Country Director Hervil Cherubin and myself. Hervil is a Haitian who returned to his country after the 2010 earthquake to be a part of the solution.

Private businesses hoping to move Haiti forward while also making a profit were there en masse. The opportunity for business in Haiti is very strong. It was an interesting few days where we made contacts for future partnerships with the Haiti government, private sector and other non-governmental organizations. We talked and talked about Heifer’s commitment to Haiti, announced at the Clinton Global Initiative in October ($15 million over five years). Heifer has been in Haiti since 1999 and continues to operate ongoing projects.

We were fortunate to meet with the Minister of Agriculture to engage him in our plan. He liked the concept of the breeding centers for goats and cows that we are planning to build in the north and in the south. I was also fortunate to see a project that ended last year and saw how the addition of cows and an irrigation canal system really improved this community’s life and livelihoods. They are now selling milk in the town, all their children are going to school, and the irrigation system allows them to appropriately water their crops of okra, plantains and beans. This infrastructure enables the community to grow enough to sell extra produce for money. I asked them if they believed the Heifer project helped them have a sustainable life, and the answer was a resounding Yes! I then asked them what elsed they needed. The answer: More cows!

The community we visited was beautiful with a view of the mountains many would pay millions to have. People all have cell phones, but there’s no electricity in the village. I don’t think they care about electricity because when I asked if they had it, the project director shrugged his shoulders and said no. The kids were eating sugar cane out of the field, and the men cracked open a coconut and let us drink the water straight from it. Then we ate the meat of the coconut–delicious! They were obviously a happy group of people.

My observations about Haiti are that it is a beautiful country that has been ravaged by natural disaster, with a stunning population. This is not a war zone, but rather a society that was already in trouble, then the earthquake and hurricane took out a lot of the infrastructure. But, they are a functioning society (okay, not like we think of in the U.S.). This is a country ready for business! They are a hard-working and industrious people. There are many in poverty. Many are living in tent cities in Port au Prince, and many others live in cinderblock houses. The living conditions are atrocious, and it extends into the country as well. Heifer hopes that by providing a livestock supply chain with a good income potential, more young adults will be enticed to go back to the country to live, thus making their lives and that of their families better and relieving pressure on the already strained city (which has a population of two million).

There are many Haitian-Americans living in New York, Boston, Miami and across the United States. I ask and challenge all Americans to help Heifer make an impact in Haiti. Hervil told me as he dropped me off at the airport, that now I know what we are fighting for. Having seen it for myself, I can tell you that these are deserving, hard-working, spirited people who need assistance getting started. Heifer will be here to help. We need you to help, too! Please go to our website, www.heifer.org to see how you can help, or email me at philanthropy@heifer.org.

Heifer Staff Reflects on 2011 CGI Annual Meeting

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Written by Heifer International Regional Program Manager–Americas Anna Ulbrich. Photos by Nadia Todres.

Photo copyright Nadia Todres 2011

Heifer International CEO Pierre Ferrari attended the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting in New York this week, joining 1,200 leaders of change from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), foundations, companies and governments who came together to find solutions to some of the world’s most pressing development challenges.

The event’s three themes this year were jobs, sustainable consumption, and girls and women. During three action-packed days of solution-oriented work sessions, participants grappled with topics as diverse as how to equitably and sustainably distribute a finite number of resources among a population that is rapidly approaching seven billion, to ending child marriage within a generation. “Even though nobody went around with a long face, and we all had a good time and some laughs,” said President Bill Clinton, “there is a certain seriousness of purpose now, because we know our world is in trouble.”

Photo copyright Nadia Todres 2011

On the second day of CGI, Heifer made a commitment called Rural Entrepreneurs for Agricultural Cooperation in Haiti (REACH). The project was featured on stage during the session on Securing Global Nutrition, moderated by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. “The challenge in Haiti is that two-thirds of Haitians depend on agriculture to support their households, yet most do not recieve training in the basic practices that can improve their yeilds and maintain their livestock in a healthy way,” said Kristof. He went on to announce that Heifer would provide livestock and business training to more than 20,000 households in Haiti over the next five years, building upon the organization’s work there over the past 20 years and scaling up its impact.

REACH embodies both Heifer’s traditional values and the organization’s new strategic direction toward larger impact, measurable results and greater linkages with the market and private sector. According to Ferrari, “The project will move farmers beyond subsistence to resiliency by helping them to be part of a robust business system. The project uses a well thought-through value-chain analysis that will link farmers with markets while continuing to use Heifer’s traditional model consisting of agroecological farming, Cornerstones, production training and market access.” The vision of the project is to unleash the entrepreneurial energy that already exists in Haiti by making livestock farming, an activity that is widespread in the rural areas, into a micro-business providing families with a sustainable source of income.

According to Ferrari, CGI’s support of the initiative will be a useful “imprimatur,” from a marketing as well as from a political point of view. “It will also hold us accountable,” he said.

The session on Securing Global Nutrition had a distinguished panel that included USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah. Participants discussed technologies and approaches that yield increased productivity and nutrients. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton later echoed panelists during a plenary when she responded to her daughter Chelsea that a critical issue needing to be elevated from “trend-line” to “headline,” is food security, and the urgent need to produce more nutritious food in more places at affordable prices.

A number of key themes emphasized at CGI both reflect Heifer’s core approach to development and provide thoguht-provoking new ways of building upon these ideas. Among these is the value of partnerships, a central part of Heifer’s philsoophy, and the idea that NGOs should partner with governments to reflect their citizens’ aspirations and strengthen their national systems. In his remarks abotu NGOs’ work in Haiti, President Clinton said that although organizations’ achievements have intrinsic value, “what is achieved there will not be greater than the sum of their activities unless the proper social, political and legal systems are in place. We have to create a synergy with what the country is doing.”

While working within the framework of governments’ rural development plans is an important part of Heifer’s approach, Ferrari said he felt inspired by the powerful commitments presented by private-public-NGO partnerships. “One of the unusual aspects of this event,” he said, “is the ‘mash-up’ of the three sectors–business, government and NGO–and the manifestation of cooperation between them. They have come together with an attitude of wanting to find solutions and have made large-scale commitments, which is impressive.”

Ferrari said that while Heifer has been working with the private sector through partnerships with Danone, Elanco, GMC and others, the event led him to wonder whether the organization should expand these efforts and find new ways of partnering with international companies to support farmers. “We need to be players in the agricultural business network and to be known for having the ability to mobilize farmers who can produce with quality and consistency.” Citing as example a panel in which Indra Nooyi, chairman and CEO of PepsiCO, spoke about being a global company committed to sourcing locally, Ferrari reflected about “the tremendous potential for working with supply chains that are local while supporting societies, and for linking farmers with markets in very interesting ways.”

In thinking further about partnerships, Ferrari explored the idea of presenting programs as an investment opportunity to bankers. By lending farmers capital through Heifer projects and initiatives, lenders could participate in projects’ successes while obtaining a return on investment.

During the event’s final session, speakers echoed some of Heifer’s core values around sharing, caring and human dignity. “The only wealth you get to keep is that which you give away,” said Tom Golisano, founder of the Golisano Foundation and founding sponsor of CGI. “We need to work together toward a shared vision of prosperity and a shared vision of responsibility and a shared vision of community,” said President Clinton. In his closing remarks, the former president left the audience with the final thought that “the economic crisis afflicting the world is about way more than money. The dignity that comes to someone who knows that he or she, no matter what happens, will at least be able to put food on the table, and if they have children, take care of them and have some amount of autonomy is a matter of the human spirit.”

Heifer Makes Commitment at CGI Annual Meeting

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New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (left) greets Heifer International President and CEO Pierre Ferrari at the announcement of Heifer’s $18.7 million Haiti commitment during the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in New York.


We got some pretty exciting news today at Heifer. Our commitment to help rebuild rural communities and to improve economic opportunities in Haiti was chosen to be part of the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting. CEO Pierre Ferrari announced Heifer International’s commitment from the stage today.

The commitment will help 20,250 families increase their incomes by combining livestock and crop inputs for integrated farming, improved husbandry techniques, business training and community-building. The project —REACH, or Rural Entrepreneurs for Agricultural Cooperation in Haiti — will develop 150 breeding centers and provide training for 120 community health workers who, in turn, will train an average of 200 farmers each.

Under Heifer International’s five-year, $18.7-million commitment, Heifer Haiti will work with farming families, aid organizations, producers’ groups, municipalities, ministries and others to rehabilitate and strengthen the crop- and livestock-based livelihoods for farming families in Haiti’s Northwest, Northeast, Nippes, Grand Anse, Central Plateau and Southeast departments.

The project will include goats, cattle, poultry and pigs. Participants will use integrated farming to improve production and strengthen linkages with buyers and others, such as input suppliers, processors and transporters. Heifer will select the most successful farmers from its training program and provide them with additional support to start up 150 family-run centers to provide breeding services and an increased supply of quality animals in strategic regions.

A key element of the project will be to encourage farmers to view their livestock production as a business, which can become a sustainable source of income.

The breeding centers are expected to create 300 full-time jobs, and Heifer estimates incomes of project farmers and breeding center owners will increase between 100 percent and 220 percent over the current $50 per month average.

This commitment meets all three topic areas for this year’s CGI program — jobs, sustainable consumption and empowering girls and women—all of which are key components of our model.

We hope the enterprise will serve as a model for the state to consider for replication, key to igniting the kind of transformation Haiti needs to become self-sustaining. Three hundred full-time jobs will be created and more than 83,000 will benefit indirectly.

REACH will revitalize rural areas by providing economic opportunities so farmers won’t have to migrate to urban centers. The plan will particularly target youth, who are increasingly leaving rural areas for work, leading to an “aging” countryside.
  
Livestock constitutes 30 percent of Haiti’s agricultural production and 26 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Heifer’s commitment will train farmers to better manage their livestock and to integrate them into a true farming system that provides protein, draft power and fertilizer to improve diet and nutrition and agricultural productivity.


In the video below, Heifer Haiti country director Hervil Cherubin shares more about this exciting new initiative.