Sustainability at Heifer International: Part 2

Posted on October 13, 2012 by Pierre Ferrari

At Heifer International, “sustainability” is much more than a buzzword. It’s at the core of everything we do. If your donation isn’t going to make a lasting difference, what’s the point of giving? As I mentioned in my blog post Thursday, Heifer’s work can be viewed through three lenses of sustainability. This post is the second in a three-part series to examine what genuine sustainability looks like at Heifer International. Read Part 1 here.

Sustainability: The capacity to endure

Heifer’s work is made possible through the contributions of individuals, families, congregations, civic groups, schools, private foundations, corporate partners, government entities and others. What a shame it would be if these generous gifts, once given, became obsolete. The beauty of our model, however, is that the original recipients of a project’s livestock, agricultural resources and training are committed to Passing on the Gift in equal quantity and quality.

Sustainability through Passing on the Gift in China. Photo by Russell Powell, courtesy of Heifer International.

Watch Alton Brown explain how gifts to Heifer International exemplify sustainability through Passing on the Gift:

This process happens a minimum of one time per project. Would you believe that the average project’s gifts are passed on for five or six (livestock) generations? In Nepal, some projects have Passed on the Gift 13 times. These extra pass-ons aren’t at the requirement of our project staff; they happen because families and communities are so transformed by these gifts, they want to keep paying it forward. Now that’s making a donation last.

Check back on the Heifer Blog tomorrow for Part 3 of this Sustainability at Heifer series. Better yet, subscribe to the blog by email or RSS feed and keep up with Heifer every day.

Want to give the gift of genuine sustainability? Visit our online gift catalog now.

From the Field: Heifer’s Work Around the World

Posted on October 9, 2012 by Erin Snow

This weekly post shines a light on a handful of stories from Heifer.org’s “From the Field” section.

Thinking outside the box, being open to doing things differently, can be the tipping point to success. Heifer’s work is carried out by innovative people who are constantly thinking of ways to improve their methods and reap even more success.

Bees and their honey make life sweet for coffee farmers in Guatemala

Since bees joined the coffee farming activities of Guatemala’s Tuiboch village, honey has become a sweet bonus business. Read Bees Improve Yield for Guatemala Coffee Farmers to learn more.

Staff from Heifer Poland and the Polish Development Cooperation of the Ministry of Public Affairs were on hand to celebrate the opening of two new projects in Armenia. Find out how this bi-national collaboration means successful project implementation in Fruitful Partnership Betwen Armenia and Poland Leads to Tangible Results.

Empowering a Remote Village to Improve Livelihoods tells how Lin Fengchen, a farmer in China’s rural Sangfang village, encouraged skeptical villagers to join a chicken raising cooperative. In addition to building a brand, Jianmenguan Natrual-Fed Chicken, cooperative members have dramatically increased their income through diverse and sustainable agriculture activities.

A Hopeful Spring in Tibet

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Heifer China

The cold winter had finally passed. The belated spring put a hopeful smile on the herdsman’s face, because for herdsmen, the spring is the key season of the year. It often snows in the highland areas in spring, which probably causes livestock death and serious economic loss. On the other hand, spring is also the hopeful season here, because it’s the breeding season for yaks and sheep, which means spring is the best season to increase this family’s income.

Quzong's baby yaks

Quzong is busying delivering babies for livestock as usual this year. All eight sheep babies and four yak babies are alive now. If the babies grow up soundly, Quzong’s income will increase RMB 3800 this year, which is fantastic for her, and she has not had such a big increase in income for the last few years. The breeding season is the busiest, most tiring and difficult season for herdsmen. Quzong has to get up at 4 am every morning and walk through mountains and valleys with her yaks and sheep. If some yak gives birth, she will go to help it quickly and give it simple medical care as well. Besides, Quzong needs to take care of the babies at night, for they mean all to her.

Quzong's yaks

This year’s harvest could help Quzong achieve a wish, which is to purchase a set of famous Tibetan cushions. As we know (since she has purchased a set of Tibetan furniture last year) Quzong cannot afford cushions any more. This has worried her for a long time, because according to the Zhegu custom, if you have the best Tibetan furniture, you have to use the best cushions to match or people will laugh at you. We hope Quzong could purchase the best cushions by the end of this year in order to better her life.

Editor’s note: This post is part of a series that follows the progress of specific families, starting at the beginning of their work with Heifer. Our team in China has chosen one family in each region where we work and is sharing quarterly updates as these families work to better their lives with Heifer’s help.

A Fantastic Experience in Hong Kong

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Heifer China

April was a special month for the children of Heifer China project participants. Some of them had the opportunity to visit Hong Kong, where they met with a number of students and donors. This year, Mao Huanhuan (Wang Qinghua’s son) had his dream tour in Hong Kong. The seven-day trip gave children who are from the remote villages a great opportunity to see the outside world. Huanhuan and two other children visited six Hong Kong schools, where they had classes and played games with children as well as introduced their families and talked about how Heifer has changed their lives. Huanhuan showed them a homemade toy top, which is a toy Hong Kong children also enjoy.

Heifer China project children visit Heifer Hong Kong to meet with donors

Huanhuan and the other children attended two gatherings of donors. They talked about the changes brought about by Heifer, answered all questions from donors and talked about the future. Huanhuan even cried, “These uncles and aunts are so nice to care about me and my family. I was always afraid that my family cannot support me to go to college, but they are encouraging me to believe in myself then my dream will come true.”

At last, they took part in the finals of “Primary Student Good Book Presentation Competition,” an event supported by the Hong Kong department of education, HSBC and Heifer Hong Kong. Mao Huanhuan also made a presentation on behalf of the Chengde recipients, giving the “Thanks” certificate to the representatives of HSBC to show gratitude for their funding.

“It’s amazing to see the creativity and expressiveness of Hong Kong’s students. In only 3 minutes, they could recommend and introduce a book to everyone with different presentation styles. Some of them spoke in Mandarin, others in Cantonese, some even in English,” Huanhuan says. “I should learn from them to improve myself to acquire better public speaking skills. Thanks to Heifer and all the kind-hearted people for giving me this chance.”

Mao Huanhuan and other children attend the school event

“As Mao Huanhuan’s parent, I felt grateful that he could get the opportunity to visit Hong Kong and meet donors and students there,” Wang Qinghua said. “Thanks to Professor Song (Heifer China’s Beijing Regional Manager) and other leaders [for making this] recommendation. When I heard the news, I was too delighted to say any words. I’ve never imagined Huanhuan could go to Hong Kong.”

On May 3^rd and 4^th, the CEO and other managing directors of Elanco, the chairman of Eli Lily Foundation, and the CFO and other leaders of Heifer International came to Weichang County to visit Heifer China’s Yangebai and Deanzhuang project sites. They also paid a visit to Wang Qinghua’s house and asked more questions about the project.

Rob Smith (Chairman of Lily Foundation) and Wang Qinghua

Heifer China Empowers a Family and a Village

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Heifer China

We paid a visit to Wang Qinghua’s home earlier this year, and we saw that in the past three months, this family of Heifer China project participants has experienced some changes. Wang Qinghua bought a seven-seat van for purchasing goods and ingredients for her restaurant. Meanwhile, it was used to send water to the Daxigou forest farm twice each day.

The family got 21,000 Yuan (about US $3,300) in income through cattle rearing, about $470 in income from their vegetable plantation, about $2,200 through running the restaurant, and roughly $1,400 from their corn, potato, hazelnut and mushroom crops. This year the family has spent more than $860 on elders’ medical care, $1,500 on their son’s tuition and boarding fees and $315 on a computer.

The whole family are having lunch.

Because of the success of the De’anzhuang Project, the television station in Weichang County broadcasted “Small Village, New Changes: Heifer Program in De’anzhuang” four times a day for two days in February in order to inform people about the big changes in this small village. Wang Qinghua, as one of the three project families, was interviewed by the journalists and appeared on the TV program. Other Heifer China self-help group members and Wang Qinghua also did participatory self-reviews and planning on project activities in 2011 and practiced their Yong Ko dance. They also received trainings on marketing, spring season cattle rearing technology and pole bean growing.

Wang Qinghua’s son, Mao Huanhuan, experienced a significant winter vacation by doing lots of activities such as feeding cattle, washing clothes, playing basketball and playing Chinese chess while completing his assignments. Moreover, he helped collect a special kind of plant especially for urinary tract infection treatment to help a member of their village who is suffering from this condition.

Mao Huanhuan feeding one of the family's cows.

As to community development, the community facilitator organized a discussion on exploring markets and enlarging the sales of vegetables. They finally reached an agreement to establish a cooperative, and Deli Vegetable Plantation Cooperative has been officially registered. 208 families in this village bought a share, and more than $28,000 in start up funds was raised. The construction of the road and the De’anzhuang middle bridge have been completed. There are also plans for a 1000 square meter vegetable trade market, a 220 square meter office and a fresh-preserved storehouse with the capacity of storing 60 tons of vegetables. This cooperative will focus on conducting the trade near their village. They also plan to install a street lamp, dig 15 wells, construct six small bridges and pilot a wind power project.

Through Heifer China, a Thriving Business for Zhang Hui

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Heifer China

The freezing rain in GuiZhou Province has lasted for a long time from the days before Lunar New Year. But the weather didn’t change Zhang Hui and his wife’s resolve to make a difference in their lives.

In the past three months, there have been a lot of changes for Zhang Hui and his family. The 500 pheasants he raised were sold out during the Spring Festival. Demand exceeds supply. Zhang Hui regretted not raising more to earn more money — each pheasant sold at a price of RMB 70 Yuan (about US $11), which brought Zhang an income of 31,500 Yuan (nearly $5,000). After factoring in the costs for feed, corn, disease prevention and chicks, Zhang earned $3,470 of net income.

In addition, the natural-fed chickens Zhang raised were also sold for a very good price. During the past three months, he has sold 726 natural-fed chickens at a price of about $12 each, which brought him a profit of $6,944. With this income, Zhang Hui bought 24 breeding hens and four breeding cocks. Zhang has accumulated about 600 hatching eggs up to this point, and he plans to raise all of the hatched chicks. Zhang also bought a hatching machine at a cost of about $500.

“With the help of the hatching machine, I can hatch more chicks to raise, which saved me a lot of expenditures on purchasing chicks,” Zhang says. “And I can also sell chicks; it’s a win-win.”

As his business expanded, Zhang also enlarged his chicken house. He used wood and iron sheeting to build two new poultry houses with a fence surrounding them. With a key function of raising pheasants, each house covers nearly 60 square meters and a nearly 600 square meter open area is fenced for raising chickens. The building materials of the two poultry houses cost 6,500 Yuan, or about $1,025.

: A new poultry house

Because his pheasant business is off to such a great start, Zhang went back to his profession, which is making leather shoes. Shortly after his return from Guangzhou, Zhang started a small shoe business. But at that time, he had little start-up money, he was not skilled at manufacturing shoes and the market was not good. Those factors led to him running his shoe business in a deficit. With the money they earned from their livestock rearing, the couple has re-started their shoe business. Zhang bought a machine at a cost of about $4,100. Their work is mainly to process semi-finished products into final products.

“The main business for us is still the poultry rearing. My wife and I just do the manufacturing work for two hours at noon, and another two hours at night,” Zhang says. “When it rains, we also do the shoe processing. My wife is still a new-comer for this; she is very slow at this, but I will teach her. When we are old, we can use this craft to make a living. This doesn’t cost too much, we can pass this craft to our children if they are not good at study.”

Zhang and his wife have made 200 pairs of shoes together since January, with a profit of about $4.70 per pair. At this time, the predictable income is about $950. One of Zhang Hui’s older brothers runs a shoe store in Kaitang Township, and Zhang can have his shoes sold there. “Making shoes is a tough job, but every time when I look at the future of my family, I can hold it even if I feel alone,” Zhang says. “I want to drink wine every day, play Mahjong, watch the battle between the oxen, singing and dancing, just like everybody else did. But I take time to make shoes, if I can enlarge my business in the future, I will make leather bags. I can also use the leftover materials to make kids shoes, which can bring me about $3 each.”

: Shoe making machine

Since Zhang’s income has increased, he purchased a stereo. When he stays at home, he can listen to some music to make his life happier.

Children Benefit from Heifer China Self-Help Group

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Erin Snow

Story and photos by: Yu Hongshui, Anhui Regional Manager, Heifer China

On August 7, the sun blazed like a fireball. Residents of Huwan Village, Guji Town, didn’t

Children give final performance of the summer

work on their farms. They carried small stools to the village playground because the children were going to perform a show.

Heifer China’s Self-Help Community Development Project in North Anhui started in Huwan Village, Guji Town, Jieshou City in April 2011. In coordination with Jieshou City Poverty Alleviation Office, Heifer’s project partner, and the project community management committee, 132 poverty-stricken families from five self-help groups (SHGs) became the first group of project participants. They began raising goats to promote sustainable development in the community. In the past year, goat-rearing activities have been scaled up, leading to an increase in income for most project participants..

In a recent management committee meeting, SHG members brainstormed ideas to do something different during summer vacation. With Fuyang Normal College as liaison, Huwan Village organized a college student volunteer activity. As volunteers, two students from Fuyang Normal College, Chen Tao and Chen Zhou, lived with project participant families and taught kids to paint, play sports, dance and perform martial arts. Village leaders, farmers and students strongly supported the students’ volunteer efforts. All the students at Huwan Primary School participated in this activity. Even students studying in the township returned to the village to attend the final performance of the summer vacation activity on August 7.

At 9 a.m., children dressed in gorgeous costumes started performing various numbers, including martial arts, dancing and singing.

The changes evident in Huwan Village are the best interpretation of Heifer’s “Not a cup, but a cow.”

Heifer China Eases a Mother’s Burden

Posted on August 6, 2012 by Heifer China

When we visited Zhang Min’s home again, she looked very unhappy because her husband’s illness continues to worsen. Wang Chunqiang has AIDS, and he has no appetite and feels sick all the time. This also means that he is unable to work. He told us his family sold two goats this year and bought another female one, who had delivered two goat babies already. “Thanks for Heifer’s help! ” he says. Zhang Min added, “We raise goats so that we could get money by selling them in an emergency. Heifer really helps us in this way. Now we bought another goat again; she had babies as well. The hope is endless.”

Heifer China: A woman cooks in a household affected by AIDS in Anhui Province

Zhang Min cooks at her home in Wangzhuyuan Village, Anhui Province, China.

As for the last Chinese New Year, it was good that they got RMB 200 (about US $31), as well as two bags of flour from the government. Zhang Min’s sister also gave them two fish, two ducks and 5kg of meat — meat is not something this family usually has available to them. Their son, Wang Haoran, has studied hard, and his final exam scores were good. This brings great pleasure to Zhang Min.

There’s another happy event in this unlucky family. We heard Zhang Min has been elected as National People’s Congress deputy of the town. “Thanks to Heifer, I enjoy this honor.” Zhang Min smiled. There are a lot of weddings or birthday invitations in this village, and Zhang Min had to give gifts to them according to local custom, which is a burden to this family. But for future, Zhang Min is still optimistic and confident because of Heifer.

Editor’s note: This post is part of a series that follows the progress of specific families, starting at the beginning of their work with Heifer. Our colleagues in the field have chosen one family in each region in the countries where we work and will bring us quarterly updates. You can read the first post about Zhang Min and her family here.

Heifer China Restores Hope in an Earthquake-Ravaged Village

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Heifer China

Three months have passed since our last update on Heifer China project participant Chang Julan and her family. They live in Fuxing Village — one of the Sichuan earthquake disaster areas. Since our last post, two of her sows got pregnant and one of which gave birth to four piglets in the first half of February 2012 and another 12 piglets in the second half. In these months, she planted cabbages, garlic, scallions and radishes, and she now raises chicken as well.

As planned, Chang Julan built her kitchen with the help of Heifer China self-help group (SHG) members. Now she can cook inside, though the cooking facilities are not yet fully equipped. In this spring festival of 2012, she and other SHG members conducted celebration activities and they also participated in the activity organized by the local township government. Their dance performance was highly complimented. In addition, Chang Julan spent about RMB 2000 Yuan buying a new refrigerator from Longtan Township and she said it would make it a lot easier to preserve food.

The New Kitchen

In February, her son Yang Jiusong transferred to a vocational school in Guangyuan city and studies computers; it will take him three years to graduate. This school will help him get a job if he successfully graduates.

Chang Julan and her parents

When it comes to the plan of 2012, Chang Julan said she would decorate the kitchen and purchase some cooking equipment. And soon enough, she will be busy as the season of planting and harvesting is approaching.

Pheasants Mean Business is Good for Zhang Hui

Posted on July 23, 2012 by Heifer China

Guizhou Province endured a long stretch of heavy rain, creating problems for many travelers. But for Zhang Hui’s family and for all of Baishui Village this was a joyful occurance: last year’s severe drought was fresh in everyone’s minds, leaving a lingering fear for the year ahead. But with this bountiful amount of rainwater the villagers were assured of a good harvest.

This inundation left everyone very busy, especially considering the season, and Zhang Hui was no exception. Although during this period he had only sold 78 pheasants (for a total of RMB6240 or US $981, and a profit of RMB3100 or US $487), Zhang Hui’s main concern at the moment was the successful incubation, hatching, and nurturing of his chicks.

“Don’t think that because these chicks are small they won’t be able to fetch a good price. My incubator can hold more than 600 eggs at a time with a successful hatching rate of over 80%. So I’ll sell this batch of 1,120 birds for a profit of RMB11,800 (US $1854),” Zhang says. “Then I’ll buy more chicks from elsewhere at RMB 3.5 (US $0.55) each and incubate them for 20 days before selling them off again at a price of RMB 15 (US $2.36) each, making a profit of over RMB 10 on each bird.”

Zhang Hui managing the incubator

Zhang Hui plans to sell all his pheasants at the Lunar New Year, so at present he still has all his current chicks. This year Zhang Hui has decided to raise 4,000 chickens before the Lunar New Year, so that by Lunar New Year next year he will have made a small fortune. Going along with this scale of expansion, this year Zhang also planted 20 mu of corn. He said, “This year the corn I plant will have 2 days of after-manuring, when I’ll ask friends to come help out. Everything else can be done by the children and their mother, so I won’t need to do anything at all.”

Studying Mom's technique for making leather shoes

Zhang Hui feels very satisfied because not only are his two daughters both obedient, they are also talented: the elder daughter is top in her class, and the younger daughter is a talented painter, getting second prize in a contest held on Children’s Day (June 1^st).

“Usually I have so many things to do, making my time at home limited. It’s difficult to help look after the children,” Zhang said. “So I bought and brought home an electric rice cooker and a microwave to give them, to make it easier for them to cook for themselves.”

The younger daughter cleaning the pen

Zhang Hui’s family is getting on better and better. Recently Zhang applied for building an operational base to better raise his pheasants, and has already heard that his application has been approved. Zhang’s wife is a skilled artisan in every aspect of making leather shoes, and is happy to help shoulder responsibility for her family. The children, too, are growing up peacefully and happily. All in all, we can see a family that has a bright future ahead of them!

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