Tag Archives: Honduras

Chickens Free Honduran Farmers from Dependence

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From June 24-July 1, 16 professional educators from around the United States traveled Honduras with Heifer International to visit various projects. Sarah French, an education coordinator at Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Arkansas, led the tour; and her reflections on witnessing a Passing on the Gift ceremony are included here. Check the blog over the next few weeks for more posts from Study Tour participants to hear their perspective on seeing Heifer’s work in the field. Learn more about Heifer’s programs and resources for educators.

Now I am Free

The bougainvillea grew thick among the simple whitewashed homes topped by clay shingles in Mejocote, a small hillside community in western Honduras. We were there to witness the first Passing on the Gift by a family who had received 20 hens and a rooster 13 months ago. The walk from our van down a hillside was lined with coffee, avocado, mango and banana trees—evidence that the participants here were practicing integrated farming.

The site for the ceremony was Don Jose Garcia’s small, simple rented home, and we were greeted there as honored guests. White plastic chairs set up in a circle awaited us, and it was our group that felt honored to receive the information the Popular Association of Integral Development (ADPI) group gave on how they had used funds and resources they had received from Heifer. Accountability seems to be a paramount Cornerstone in the field, and groups like ADPI are only too proud to show how far they can stretch slight means.

Outside the home of the Garcia family.

Pastor Mejia Vargas, president of ADPI began the ceremony with a reminder that this family was not poor in love, but merely money. “We can respond to what this project asks of us because one of the Cornerstones is sharing. Today we share with a family in need. It is a joy to be present here,” he said.

Jose Gregorio Quintinella then spoke. Quintinella was Passing on the Gift along with his family. He explained that at first, he was not interested in chickens; chickens were “women’s work,” he said. After further education and the support of his family, he eventually decided to apply for chickens after all. He has grown to enjoy the birds, and, “Thanks to God, now I am free, no one else’s responsibility. Free from being subject to others.”

Jose Gregorio Quintinella about to pass on a chicken.

The gift that the Quintinella family passed on to the Garcia family comes with responsibility. All heads of household must sign the contract, agreeing to pass on the gift and care for the animals, among further duties. There are always obstacles, but the families who have received these gifts demonstrate that families are capable; they can benefit and pass on benefits to others in need.

Each member of the Quintinella family passed a hen to each member of the Garcia family. The rooster, “El Macho,” watched from his new home with its still wet mud walls solidifying to protect him from predators. Don Jose Garcia, father of the receiving family, shared his dream with the group to use the income from the chickens to move out of his rented home and into one he plans to build on nearby land.

The Quintinella family (right) passes on the gift to the Garcia family (left).

We celebrated the event with a gift of sweet rice milk provided the community, furthering the idea that “those with least tend to give the most.”

In Honduras, where three out of four people in rural areas live below the poverty line, we have a unique opportunity to bring about lasting change. A generous donor will match your contributions up to $1.5 million, for a total of $3 million to help struggling communities in Honduras. We’re close to reaching our goal, but we still need your help.

Fifth Graders Sing for Heifer

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Teachers are the best. Kathleen Yanez, a teacher at Jack Jackter Intermediate School wrote a song and recorded her 5th grade class singing as part of their school’s Read to Feed initiative. What a great example of using your talents to raise awareness for a cause. She gave us permission to put her song to best use, and we’ve created a short slideshow of photographs of Heifer project participants’ children in Honduras.

In Honduras, where three out of four people in rural areas live below the poverty line, we have a unique opportunity to bring about lasting change. A generous donor will match your contributions up to $1.5 million, for a total of $3 million to help struggling communities in Honduras. We’re close to reaching our goal, but we still need your help.

Help Us Meet the Honduras Challenge

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In Honduras, where three out of four people in rural areas live below the poverty line, Heifer International has a unique opportunity to bring about lasting change. A generous donor will match your donations up to $1.5 million, for a total of $3 million to help struggling communities in Honduras. Please watch this short video, and give if you are able. Your donation is vitally important — no matter the amount. Help us meet the challenge.


How Heifer Projects Are Promoting a Healthy Environment: Part 3

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On April 18, Worldwatch Institute’s blog, Nourishing the Planet, published a list of 15 ways agriculture can “promote a healthier environment and a more food-secure future.” In honor of Earth Day 2011, we would like to explore these 15 ways and how Heifer’s projects around the world are addressing these issues. We are doing this in three separate posts, matching five Heifer projects with the corresponding Nourishing the Planet concepts. Read 1-5 here and 6-10 here.

11. Investing in Africa’s Land: Crisis and Opportunity
Okay, so we’re not doing EVERYTHING on this list. But while we may not be creating collaborations between African farmers and foreign entities, land grabbing is on our radar. And we are absolutely working to help farmers in Africa hold onto and make the most of their land.
Fund a Project in Rwanda, where only 32.7 percent of the land is suitable for farming.
12. Charting a New Path to Eliminating Hunger
Have I ever mentioned how much I like biogas? The connection between biogas and eliminating hunger might not be obvious, but it’s certainly there. I’ve written before about the Uganda Domestic Biogas Program, which is targeting 12,160 families over the five-year project period. Not only is the project helping farmers install biogas units on their farms, it is actually establishing a market for domestic biogas installations and accessories, which builds local economies.
Biogas (as compared to charcoal or wood) cooks faster and burns cleaner, which is important for rural women. Healthy women are more productive, for one thing. In addition to being better for the environment, no longer purchasing charcoal or wood for cooking frees up income to be spent on education and health care. And children whose families have biogas lanterns can stay at home and study for school, which could impact their overall success.


Another alternative to traditional stoves are improved cook stoves (ICS), which are smokeless and use considerably less wood. Fund a Project in India that will, in addition to livestock, distribute ICS to participating families.

13. Moving Ecoagriculture into the Mainstream
Heifer began practicing agroecology with our participants since the mid-1980s and officially established an Agroecology Initiative in 2000 to place a greater emphasis on environmental protection as part of our work. Methods used on Heifer’s project participants’ farms include planting trees, using manure and other sources of natural fertilizer, zero- or managed-grazing techniques, contour planting and terracing, and improved cooking stoves or biogas units.
In fact, pick any one of these projects, and you’ll be helping move ecoagriculture into the mainstream.
14. Improving Food Production from Livestock
In many of the places Heifer works, pastureland for livestock may either be limited or poor in quality. By helping farmers build zero-grazing pens and by helping farmers identify and improved grow fodder crops, Heifer helps farmers increase the yields of their dairy animals.
While in Uganda, I had the chance to see zero-grazing in practice. Here’s a little footage:
Read about Huruma Mhapa from Tanzania, a 2011 Women in Livestock Development Award winner, and her plans for an improved zero-grazing pen for her cows. What’s remarkable is that more than 9,000 people have visited her farm for training and to learn about zero-grazing and organic farming.
Heifer also improves food production from livestock by teaching and building capacity for crossbreeding and artificial insemination to improve the productivity of local livestock.
15. Going Beyond Production
In the interest of diversity, I’m going to take this one in a slightly different direction, because although we’ve dealt with dairy surplus with our East Africa Dairy Development Project, and we’ve connected these farmers to the dairy value chain, I think “going beyond production” can be interpreted in more than one way.
For example, Heifer Poland’s Agriculture and Tourism Development Project is helping farmers who live within the boundaries of the East Carpathian Biosphere Reserve, which protects the ecosystem but also limits certain agricultural activities. Through the project, farmers are becoming beekeepers, converting their dairy cattle herds into beef production (EU restrictions make small-scale dairy farming difficult), and learning to become hosts for tourists interested in the reserve and in other features of agrotourism.

How Heifer Projects Are Promoting a Healthy Environment: Part 2

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On April 18, Worldwatch Institute’s blog, Nourishing the Planet, published a list of 15 ways agriculture can “promote a healthier environment and a more food-secure future.” In honor of Earth Day 2011, we would like to explore these 15 ways and how Heifer’s projects around the world are addressing these issues. We are doing this in three separate posts, matching five Heifer projects with the corresponding Nourishing the Planet concepts. Read 1-5 here.


6. Using Farmers’ Knowledge in Research and Development

Heifer Lithuania’s Cooperation and Development of Farmers for Poultry and Rabbits in Plunge Project is increasing entrepreneurship among rural people living near Zemaitija National Park by first creating sources of income for the local community and then providing the foundation for local business creation. Last April, project participants went to a hands-on training on rabbit breeding and keeping on a local, modern rabbit farm. The farmer had received his own training in Spain and was very kind to show his farm, share his experiences and answer project participants’ questions. The farmer had 500 female rabbits, some of which were pregnant, while others already had offspring. The farmer shared his expertise in making rabbit hutches. Upon returning home, project participants were inspired to make their own farms as productive as the one they had visited.
7. Improving Soil Fertility
Heifer project participants around the world use a number of soil-enriching agricultural practices. Compost, animal manure and even worms (and their castings) can be used to build the soil. Some of our projects are located in valleys with rich, fertile soil. Other projects, including those in cities, must improve their soil before they can begin to grow anything.
Do this experiment to learn how earthworms act as nature’s plows and add nutrients to soil and build your own worm bin.
Fund a Project in Oregon that will provide earthworms, among other things, to participants.
8. Safeguarding Local Food Biodiversity
Heifer’s Sustainable Food Systems in Copan and Lempira, Honduras Project will benefit 2,058 families in western Honduras. Families here struggle with poverty that is exacerbated by farming steeply sloping land with low fertility. This project provides cows, hens, fish, goats, sheep, rabbits, bee hives and fruit trees. In addition to promoting agroecological practices, this project is help;ing families establish food gardens with local crops to feed people and livestock, for natural medicine and to protect the environment. The project also works to recover and promote the use of local seeds.
9. Coping with Climate Change and Building Resilience

Read this post on how Heifer’s projects improve local ecosystems, help families out of poverty and cope with the changing environment.
10. Harnessing the Knowledge and Skills of Women Farmers
Much of Heifer’s work, particularly in Asia/South Pacific, is done through women’s groups. Women are severely marginalized in many countries here, but it is the women who are the communities’ best bets. Here’s the story of a project participant from Nepal:

I am Tika Mahato, a member of the Daunnedevi Women’s Group. As the eldest of three sisters in a poor family where both parents worked from morning to night, I was burdened with the responsibility of taking care of my siblings. My father was ver encouraging about my education, but he was also pressured by society’s norms about women.

I come from a marginalized ethnic group in Nepal, the tharu, in which women are considered the family’s honor and treasure. We are not allowed to tread outside of our houses, talk to strangers or voice our thoughts on family matters. Girls from the age of 10 are encouraged to find partners and get married. I was married at the age of 15 and bore two children by the time I was 19. My in-laws were not very well off. The family struggled to provide for every meal. All of us worked as laborers, but money was never enough. In 2006, an incident changed my life as I knew it; my husband passed away, leaving me with two children.

Having always been dependent on him for everything, I was in a state of shock for a long time. I stopped caring for my two children. What would I do with my life? The question and its unknown answers plagued my mind. My mother says I used to stare at nothing for hours. During that time, a group was being formed. Seeing this as an opportunity to engage me, my mother forced me to join. Reluctant to focus on anything except my misery, I did go to the meetings but never took part in any discussions. Slowly, the members started becoming my friends. I felt like I had someone to count on in the time of need.

My group then took the Cornerstones training — it was like four days of continuous awakening. I felt like all my questions after my husband’s death were being answered. I was overcome with guilt for abandoning my children. Yet instead of looking ahead in life, I was burying myself in the sorrows of my past. Though fully capable of working and providing for my family, I was becoming a burden for my parents with whom my children and I lived after the death of my husband.


I now have a renewed sense of faith and belief in myself. I have my goats that I received as gifts from Heifer, and my life has found a purpose with the goats. I plan to be independent and raise my children without the shadow of poverty.

Fund a Project working with women’s groups in India, Nepal, Laos or Cambodia

A Small Farm Perspective on the UN Climate Change Summit

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A Heifer project participant cooks on a stove fueled with biogas.


by Terry Wollen

This year’s international round of discussion on climate change is taking place in Cancun, Mexico. Officially known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, this summit is focusing on numerous topics – not the least of which is greenhouse gasses. Indeed, one of the important themes around climate change has to do with mitigation of the effects of greenhouse gasses – in other words, “What can we do to make these changes less severe or hostile?”

Here at Heifer, we’ve been answering this question for years through our innovative yet simple agroecology programs. All over the developing world we’re fighting the environmental effects of greenhouse gasses by training smallholder farmers to use sustainable methods of rearing animals and raising crops.

Here are just a few of our programs that improve local ecosystems while helping families lift themselves out of poverty:

· Improving soil water retention through planting trees and wise grazing management

· Controlling soil erosion

· Rotational grazing practices for small and large ruminants like goats, cattle, llamas alpacas, and water buffalo

· Periodic or sustained use of zero-grazing pens

· Improved animal feeding with local resources, using an educated understanding of animal nutrient requirements

· Better manure management through composting, covering wet and dry manure storage and incorporation of this animal by-product in crop grounds.

While animals and animal by-products do emit greenhouse gasses, an educated understanding of where these gasses come from and means to reduce their impact are mitigation practices that can be accomplished by all smallholder farmers.

Let me offer a real-world example: In the Conco community in Copan Ruinas, Honduras, the family of Jesus Esquivel and other partners of the local Heifer Honduras project have transformed the fragile surrounding hillsides from erosion and excessive tree harvesting to a sloping landscape that now holds water for irrigation, productive livestock for community markets and a school for local children. This has been accomplished through wise management of livestock grazing and zero-grazing pens, tree planting, contour land management for farming, manure composting and application to soils, along with improved kitchens using biogas from the animal pens and improved stoves.

The issues surrounding greenhouse gasses and climate change are many and complex. Heifer International can speak with authority on ways to mitigate the effects of climate change as we’ve seen our model yield real, life-changing results in some of the world’s most vulnerable communities.

Terry Wollen is the Interim Vice President for Advocacy at Heifer International and a former livestock veterinary practitioner.

Bigness here.

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A Study Tour Reflection by Kelly Keena

Evident by the introduction of the group to the community was not only the gratitude for Heifer’s gift, but the intensity of what comes from within communities and individuals. The president of the organized group, Rubio Torrez, a small man with a strong conviction, spoke:

“We have bigness here. We have bigness in the trees. We have bigness in our people.”

I sat, thankful again for this experience, humbled by the hospitality and moved by the introductions where I learned that of the twenty-two people involved in the group, half were women and half were men, an important aspect of gender equality in Heifer’s mission.

After lunch, we walked through the community to visit group members at their homes and hear stories. These stories were not of receiving, they were of giving. As we wound through the main cobblestone path of the community we met Don Miños and learned that he had not had a cow since his childhood as his cherished heifer, I would say lovingly, licked his arm; we met Susana whose mother and calf (“Doll Face”) stood without disturbance to our presence…and our camera flashes.

And in front of Susana’s home, we formed a circle assorted by community members intermingled with study tour participants, hands held, and Rubio Torrez spoke again:

“You are our friends even though we have never met you.”

I am grateful for the opportunity to witness the power of small, impoverished communities with everlasting bigness.

Kelly Keena was a participant on this summer’s first session of the Study Tour for Educators in Honduras.

Crazy About Bees

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by Christian DeVries

Santiago Morales-Mata is crazy about bees. Twenty-six years ago he received his first hive but he knew nothing bees, but after years of trial and error he got better.

In 2002 he joined a Heifer bee project. He still had very limited knowledge, so the trainings (along with the 10 hives) he received were important for him to take his beekeeping to the next level. Santiago learned everything he could, from how to start a new hive all the way through to harvesting honey more efficiently. “I received training which has been very important,” he said.

All of this training helped him increase his income from roughly $81 per month to $271. Santiago was able to add more cows to his herd and, in addition to beekeeper, he is a dairy farmer. When we visited his farm, it was buzzing with activity. He has 42 hives, 20 chickens and more than 40 cows. “Everything that we have, in terms of our land, animals, cows, is coming from bees,” he said.

Santiago is happy that this project has been so successful, and he believes that by passing on the gift, Heifer’s projects will reach many additional families. As I have seen firsthand on this trip there are many poor families in Honduras anxious for Heifer’s assistance.

Christian DeVries interviewed project participants in Honduras on behalf of Heifer International. This is the final installment in a series of posts he sends from the field. You can read his earlier posts here.

Farther Than We Could Ever Imagine

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by Christian DeVries

Parents always want their children to have a better life. Often this is accomplished through education, allowing the next generation to escape poverty’s tenacious grip.

Maria is 14 years old and lives with her mother and father, Blanca and Miguel. Three years ago her parents received two cows from Heifer International. Maria was excited because her family could produce their own milk and cheese. She loves cuajada, a soft cheese.

Now in 7th grade, Maria is thinking about the future. She dreams that one day she might become a teacher, and her parents are confident that if she wants to go on to college they will be able to support her.

So much has changed for them since this project began. When we visited, they were excited to show us around. Miguel has bought land to expand their farm. They are building a new home, and Blanca has been participating in adult education classes. As a child Blanca only attended school until 4th grade, now she has completed 6th grade. Maria is proud of her mom. “She has gotten more developed. She is not bashful to talk to people,” Maria said.

I am always impressed by how the gift of an animal ripples across generations going farther than we could ever imagine.

Christian DeVries interviewed project participants in Honduras on behalf of Heifer International. This is the fifth in a series of posts he sends from the field. You can read his earlier posts here.

Restoring a Richness Lost

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I recently visited Luis Acosta.  He was born in the remote community of La Elencia where he has lived for 60 years. 
During his lifetime he has seen a lot of change. “When I was 6 this was still a mountainous area with lots of animals,” he said. Unfortunately, the big trees were cut, and the wild birds, jaguar and deer left. “I think it was a huge richness we lost,” Luis said with a shake of his head.
Luis and his family began working with Heifer in 2006 when they received a cow, rabbits, fruit trees and training. Through the trainings they learned soil conservation techniques and ways to protect the environment. I was happy to learn that in a few of the areas where they restored the forest, deer and wild pigs have returned.
Beyond protecting the environment for animals, Luis points out that healthy land means healthy people. I was amazed to learn that prior to this project the local church had identified 70% of the children as malnourished, and today all of the children are at or above their normal weight.
Christian DeVries is interviewing project participants in Honduras on behalf of Heifer International. This is the fourth in a series of posts he’s sending from the field. You can read his earlier posts here.