Tag Archives: hunger

Volunteers Make a World of Difference

Posted on by
0
Photo by Chelsey McNiel, Communications Intern, Heifer Headquaters

Photo by Chelsey McNiel, Communications Intern, Heifer Headquarters

Heifer International volunteers change lives as they share in our mission to end hunger and poverty and care for the Earth. They generate support and spread joy through fundraising, education and meaningful relationships.

In the Southern Philippines, volunteers helped project participants learn methods and strategies for improved animal health.

Jun Ayensa, regional program manager for Heifer Southern Philippines, captured their work in a photo story.

Learn how you can make a world of difference

Three Days of Food

Posted on by
0

What is your greatest dream for you and your family? What do you wish for most for your children? For just one moment, ask yourself these two questions and imagine all the possibilities.

And now let me tell you a story.

It was my first morning in Rwanda and already I was feeling overwhelmed by the beauty and harsh realities of this amazing country. As we drove south out of the capitol city, Kigali, to the Mareba district, everything I saw was foreign to me but somehow familiar at the same time. All the images I’d ever seen of Africa were right here on the road we were traveling−women carrying babies on their backs while balancing giant bundles on their heads, men on bicycles taking banana bunches to market, a blast of music from a passing mini-bus, and luscious green hills opening up to wide vistas as we wound our way out of the city into the countryside. It was a bright and sunny day, the wind blowing through banana trees. By the time we reached the village of Ruduha, I was enamored with and at ease in this new, exciting place.

But the harsh reality of what my travel companions and I were there to see quickly rushed in. That morning we were visiting families with severely malnourished and sick children. These families had little or nothing to eat on a daily basis and their children were often sick from malnutrition. We were there specifically to visit Emmanuel Hategeka, a 5-year-old boy with enormous eyes and a sweet disposition. Emmanuel’s family lives in a mud house, not unusual for most rural Rwandan families, but as we went inside I saw that there was nothing–no bowls, no cups, no clothes, no bed.

Emmanuel stands outside his family's house in the Mareba district of Rwanda.

Emmanuel is 5 years old and lives in Ruduha village in Rwanda.

Emmanuel’s family had one possession, a grass mat. The family had proudly put the mat–which is used by the family to sleep on every night–out in front of the house to greet us when we arrived. As we spoke with Emmanuel’s mother about his health and the family’s access to food, we learned that he and his two sisters, Jacqueline (4) and Josiane (1), often just eat cassava. Cassava is a tuber root similar to potatoes, and while it is a good source of carbohydrates, it does not provide enough protein or other nutrients to help children like Emmanuel develop strong and healthy bodies. When we asked when the family had last eaten, Emmanuel’s mother did not immediately answer. It was as if she was trying to remember when it had been. Today? Yesterday? She could not tell us for sure.

One of my colleagues asked Emmanuel’s mother, “What is the greatest dream for your family? What do you wish for most for your children?” Her answer was, “Three days of food.”

Three days of food.

I could see the devastating effects of malnutrition in Emmanuel. Although he was intrigued and excited to be the center of attention by this group of strange visitors, he quickly tired and had trouble standing and staying awake. Emmanuel’s body was so tired from lack of food that he was falling asleep as we filmed and interviewed him. My vibrant morning and feelings of exhilaration vanished at that moment–this is what we had come to see and the reality was that this 5-year-old boy was starving.

The work we were there to do–identifying these real-life stories of need–will hopefully bring many, many new donors to Heifer International. My hope is that it will allow us to increase the number of families we can reach in Rwanda and all across the world, so that children like Emmanuel have nutritious milk and eggs to eat every day, and have the chance to grow up healthy and strong, to go to school and to have medicine when they are sick. We need as many partners as we can to reach these families and help them lift themselves up out of poverty and hunger.

Emmanuel 1 v2

Emmanuel stands outside his family’s house in the Mareba district of Rwanda.

I had to remind myself of the good work that Heifer does and the good work we will continue to do as I watched Emmanuel struggle to stay awake. I reminded myself when I thought of Emmanuel’s mother and what she must feel knowing that her children won’t eat that day. I remind myself of the good work we do so that we can give mothers like her bigger dreams for their children instead of the daily struggle just to keep them alive.

And I reminded myself of it when we drove away from their village after thanking the family so much for allowing us to meet with them. I imagined what the rest of their day would be like, as the sun begins to set and no fire is made and no food is being cooked. And Emmanuel goes to sleep with his mother and father and two sisters on the mat on the floor of their house, with an empty stomach, again.

Heifer and Partners Will Go Farther Together

Posted on by
0

Editor’s note: The following guest post is from Heifer International Corporate and Foundation Relations Account Executive, Suzanne Munson.

Current and potential corporate partners from around the globe gathered December 11th to attend Heifer’s flagship sustainability and corporate social responsibility summit: Beyond the Bottom Line: Creating Shared Value Through Partnership.

Partnership Summit

Left to Right: Cindy Jones Nyland, Heifer International EVP of Marketing and Resource Development; Margaret Coady, Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy Director; John Elkington, Volans Founding Partner and Executive Chairman; Carol Moore, Heifer Corporate and Foundation Relations Senior Account Executive; and Marleen New, Heifer Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations. Photo by Dero Sanford, courtesy of Heifer International.

The event, held at Heifer’s headquarters in Little Rock, featured welcome remarks from Governor Mike Beebe, who said that while he may never know people that Heifer International helps, they are real human beings who can’t do it without Heifer and Heifer in turn can’t do it without the corporate partners attending the conference.

“Everyone here has a give back mentality and one person can make a difference, one life at a time, one family at a time,“ said Beebe.

His comments set the tone for the day-long collaboration between corporate partners, fellow NGOs, thought leaders and Heifer staff.

Barry Bryant, Dahab Associates, Inc. Managing Director. Photo by Dero Sanford, courtesy of Heifer International.

Long-time Heifer corporate partners Elanco (Eli Lilly’s Animal Health Division) Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Danone and Garnet Hill convened to share their experiences, advice and business cases for why they’ve chosen to commit resources, funding and staff knowledge to help end hunger and poverty around the world.

Jean-Christophe Laugee, Social Innovation and Ecosystem Director for Danone, presented a session on “Supply Chain Collaboration: New, Inclusive Sourcing Partnerships to Develop Sustainable Food Chains and Brand Equity,” which in simpler terms means Danone was experiencing a dairy sourcing problem in Ukraine, and Heifer’s smallholder farmers were able to provide the solution. By marrying responsible, sustainable supply chain needs with Heifer’s project partners in the field, a win-win collaboration ensured smallholder dairy farmers could lift themselves (and their families) out of poverty by connecting to a steady market demand for their milk.

Rick Peyser, Director of Social Advocacy and Supply Chain Community Outreach for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and Kevin Watkins, Advisor, Elanco Knowledge Solutions, shared the stage to discuss the importance (and challenges) of tracking tangible results out in the field. While both agreed it’s often difficult to track progress in remote, technologically challenged-areas, concrete evidence presented to shareholders proves companies’ strategic investments are producing results – for their bottom line as well as for struggling, impoverished farmers around the world.

Although issues surrounding hunger and poverty clearly cannot be tackled during a one-day summit, it can be agreed it will take the collective might of many players: corporations, NGOs, governments and private donors to truly put an end to hunger and poverty. As the old African proverb states, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Partners for a Better Future

Posted on by
0

So often my colleagues and I travel to meet with potential partners that will help Heifer International fulfill its mission of ending hunger and poverty while caring for the Earth. This week, however, Heifer hosted our first corporate partnership conference, attended by representatives from companies such as Green Mountain, Danone, ELANCO, Wal-Mart, PepsiCo, Acxiom, Novus and many more.

Each company brought a unique perspective to the gathering, with the unified belief that truly sustainable development requires collaboration across sectors, among organizations and between individuals.

Passing on the Gift Ceremony in Bangladesh

Women in Bangladesh participating in Passing on the Gift Ceremony. Photograph by Geoff Bugbee, courtesy of Heifer International.

I know we are all aware of the challenges the world faces – hunger, poverty, resource scarcity, climate change, social unrest… and the list goes on and on. But I know, and I am driven by, the fact that it is imperative to quickly increase our impact to help more families than ever before. While Heifer has a proven model, we cannot do this work alone.

With these businesses, we explored the opportunities and obstacles of public -private partnerships. We also discussed emerging trends and best practices in corporate philanthropy, cause-related marketing, employee engagement and impact measurement.

We were pleased to welcome John Elkington as our keynote speaker for this event. John is a founding partner and executive chairman of Volans. John shared with conference participants how current shifts and pressures are forcing transformation of thinking in corporations, governments, NGOs, etc. Social entrepreneurs are pushing the boundaries of traditional markets and thinking: they are lighting a path that benefits not just a few stakeholders or the company, but also the communities and environment in which it operates.

Three key themes surfaced throughout the discussions: shared value, social capital and scale. Shared value means companies engaging in practices and operations that not only support the competitiveness of the company, but at the same time benefit the social and economic conditions of the communities in which it operates. It means placing a market value on societal issues.

Promotion of Food Sovereignty Honduras. Photograph by

Women in Honduras processing cashews. Photo by Russell Powell, courtesy of Heifer International.

I have written about social capital in one of my previous blog posts. The World Bank defines social capital as the institutions, relationships, networks and norms that underpin and shape the social interactions and well-being of communities and societies. When we talk about levels of trust in business and government, community involvement and civic engagement, we are talking about social capital.

Promotion of Food Sovereignty Honduras

Cashews from Honduras. Photograph by Russell Powell, courtesy of Heifer International.

At Heifer, building and leveraging social capital is an indispensable component of our community-based, holistic development model and a pillar of our Theory of Change. As we think about the intersection between values-based and market-driven development, social capital is an essential concept to grasp. Our nearly 70 years of experience have proven that, without social capital, development efforts are simply not sustainable.

The final key theme that emerged during our conversations was scale. Transformational change is required, and that means all of us—business, government, NGOs—must accelerate and scale up our work. We have already begun to incorporate scale into our project work, which can be seen in Nepal’s “Goat’s Give Back” project.

I am pleased Heifer brought so many different players together to discuss how we can work in collaboration to change the lives of so many families in need. I know good things are to come!

Smallholder Farmers Will Feed The World

Posted on by
1

Earlier today I presented a keynote speech at the World Food Prize 2012 Borlaug Dialogue in Des Moines, Iowa. I’d like to share with you some of what I had to say about smallholder farmers and the important role they must play in feeding the world. 

Today, our fragile and beautiful Earth is home to seven billion people. Over the next 30 years, two, maybe three billion more will join us. The global food system is struggling. Food prices peaked in 2008 and peaked again a few months ago, sparking riots and export bans. Land grabs, increasing oil prices, biofuel development, food production and distribution failures, disturbing water shortages are converging and reshaping our world and the very character of poverty and hunger.

All these forces are contributing to the distressing spike in malnutrition and poverty around the world.

The world needs smallholder farmers

Photo by Jake Lyell, courtesy of Heifer International.

But to the good, the G8, G2O, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum and others have rediscovered the critical importance of agriculture and are all promising—through public-private partnerships—to do more for smallholder farmers. We laud these decisions—smallholder farmers are the best change agents we have to help feed this hungry world. Let me explain.

Heifer International is helping lead what has been called the livestock revolution. We are working to reach a rapidly growing group of smallholder farmers, mostly women, to inspire agroecological productivity, biodiversity, financial security and health to create the surplus needed to feed the world.

There are 650 million smallholder farmers in the world and 50 to 80 percent of them are women! They grow the majority of the food eaten every day. By doubling their productivity, they can help feed the world. And we will need these 300+ million women to feed us all.

Smallholder farmers in Zambia

Smallholder farmers will feed the world, but only if we help. Photo by Jake Lyell, courtesy of Heifer International.

Along with this, we need to take advantage of new plant technologies, and spread as rapidly as possible best practices, which can double or triple yields. We also need more and better public-private partnerships to advance agriculture to help meet global needs in food security. They can open access to finance and technology and link smallholders to markets. By combining strengths, partners can all make better progress than by working on their own.

By using the greatest asset in agricultural development—the smallholder farmer—along with the best seeds, the best plants, judicious use of a range of fertilizers and wise husbandry, we can increase yields by factors of three or four. Also, rethinking subsidies for biofuel could free up vast acreage for human food production, which we know we need.

Overcoming these challenges will require new thinking, new collaborations, new openness … understanding that all successful agricultural public-private partnerships should lead to win-win situations that benefit farmers. Recent studies suggest that improvements in national incomes tied to agricultural growth have been underestimated. In truth, few countries have achieved increased prosperity without equivalent growth in agriculture.

So, what does that mean? It means that successful poverty elimination utilizes market-driven development and depends strongly on deeply embedded social engagement.

But let’s be clear on one thing—something we learned at Heifer International a long time ago: Economic growth and community development cannot be separated. They must go hand in hand.

Come back to the Heifer Blog tomorrow to learn more about how economic and community development must be done together.

In Context: Haiti

Posted on by
1

 

Population: 9.7 million

Native greeting: Kijan ou ye? (How are you?)

Capital: Port-au-Prince

Local Currency: Haitian Gourde

Overview

In the early 17th century, the French established a presence on Hispaniola, and in 1697, Spain ceded  the western third of the island to the French, which later became Haiti. The French colony, based on forestry and sugar-related industries, became one of the wealthiest in the Caribbean, but only through the heavy importation of African slaves and considerable environmental degradation. In the late 18th century, Haiti’s nearly half million slaves revolted under Toussaint Louverture. After a prolonged struggle, Haiti became the first black republic to declare its independence in 1804.

Haiti is now the least-developed country in the Western Hemisphere and one of the poorest in the world ranking 146th of 177 countries in the UN’s Human Development Index.

Inappropriate economic policies, political instability, a shortage of good arable land and environmental deterioration are factors attributed to the economic stagnation of the country. Severe deforestation makes the country extremely vulnerable to hurricanes, droughts, floods and other disasters that often times paralyzes the entire population.

Heifer in Haiti

Year Heifer Started: 1949

Families assisted in 2010: 1,135

Livestock interventions: Beef cattle, poultry, dairy goats and vegetable seeds

Technological inputs: water filtration and purification

Issues addressed: Adult literacy, poverty, food security, soil erosion, gender equity and water contamination

Established in 1999, Heifer Haiti works in seven of the ten departments in the country partnering with communities providing livestock, seeds and training to improve their living conditions empower them to brake the never-ending cycle of poverty and despair.

The program’s approach is characterized by strengthening small farmer organizations through agroecology and literacy training. Livestock, seeds and training are the main resources present in all of Heifer Haiti’s projects.

Current project work takes place in six departments in the country located in the following regions: north/northeast, Artibonite, west and south/southeast.

 

Hope for Children

Posted on by
0

As we approach June and the celebration of International Children’s Day in many countries around the world, I started to think of my own family. Tonight I will celebrate my stepdaughter’s graduation from middle school. She’s done so well, and we are so proud. I also thought even farther back about when my children were born and how when I held them in my arms for the first time, a million thoughts raced through my mind. I was fortunate to not ever worry about how I would feed them or where we would live or how I would support them. Unfortunately this is not the case for many families around the world. That is the sad truth.

Children are the most vulnerable among us, this is true from the newborn to the adolescent. Children depend on others to provide for their needs. But in so many of the countries where we work, they are vulnerable to malnutrition, which in turn,  lowers their ability to fight diseases such as malaria and gastrointestinal infections and eventually can cause death to their poor, weary bodies. But malnutrition for these children starts even earlier than we imagine. Children who are not well nourished in the first 1,000 days of their existence, including the time in their mother’s womb, are susceptible to cognitive impairment. But how is a mother supposed to care for her unborn child if she herself does not have access to healthy and nutritional food, doctors, or even clean water? According to the World Health Organization, 25,000 children (under the age of 5) die EVERY DAY, one third of those deaths resulting from malnutrition and 70 percent due to preventable or treatable conditions, given access to simple, affordable interventions. That is such a gruesome reality. Picture a stadium for your favorite sports team and fill the seats with children. All those beautiful faces lost. This is NOT OKAY.

And the children that do survive, they have another battle to fight.  I again think of my stepdaughter. It is normal – expected – that she will graduate from middle school, high school and college. In other parts of the world, many parents cannot afford to send their children to school; and when they can attend, the education is inconsistent, especially for girls. It’s so important for these children to have the opportunity to go to school because without education, these children will never overcome the cycle of poverty.

Photograph by Russell Powell, courtesy of Heifer International

This DOES NOT have to be the reality. All of Heifer’s work centers on families and communities so that resources, food, cash, assets training are available to end this tragedy as rapidly as possible. When I was last in Kenya, I met an incredible man named Laban. Laban was working with Heifer. Laban was determined to create a new life for the orphans suffering from AIDS in his community. With his hard work, and the support of the community, 32 children were given the opportunity to go to school. 32! There is the proof that it does take a village to raise children. And if he can help in his own community, certainly we can help too.

So as we honor Children’s Day this year, let’s remember the children all over the world, because they are our responsibility too.

How to End Hunger in the U.S.

Posted on by
0

A home to 300 million people, the U.S. has an estimated 49.1 million people living in hunger and poverty. That’s one in six struggling to have enough to eat. In the land of the plenty, healthy foods aren’t accessible enough to all who are in need. So what steps can we do today to make an impact in the U.S.?

1. Learn the fact about U.S. hunger from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

2. Share the facts with your family, friends, and co-workers about the effects hunger and poverty can cause:

  • Children who do not receive an adequate diet have a harder time learning and keeping up in school.
  • Children and adults who are hungry are more vulnerable to common illnesses.
  • Adults who experience malnutrition may have weak muscles, bone or joint pain, and be unable to job related tasks at maximum speed.

3. Get involved by volunteering with organizations that provide assistance to those in need.

  • Volunteer at a soup kitchen or food bank by organizing and passing out food.
  • Donate non-perishable goods to shelters and charities in your community.
  • Invite over those in need for a meal or two a week.
  • Give without spending with these easy online tools.

Two significant pockets of poverty in the United States are the Mississippi River Delta in Arkansas and Southern Appalachia. Heifer USA is focusing its work in these two regions. Watch this video to learn more:

Heifergraphic: Seeds of Change

Posted on by
0

Here in the United States, a child is born into poverty every 27 seconds. Data from the USDA suggests that this results in 1 of 5 children being food insecure, meaning that at any time during the year, a child is hungry because of the household’s lack of money and other resources for food. Additionally, the leading causes of death among Americans—heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancers directly linked to poor nutrition—are rapidly on the rise.

There is a direct connection between economic and physical health and our nation’s food system. In communities across the United States some of the critical missing elements to building localized food systems are farmers, businesses, jobs, capacity and infrastructure.

Two significant pockets of poverty in the United States are the Mississippi River Delta in Arkansas and Southern Appalachia. Heifer USA is focusing its work in these two regions, and if you check out the Heifergraphic below, I think you’ll see why:

Heifer USA infographic

Click Heifergraphic to enlarge.

To help end hunger and poverty in the Arkansas Delta and Southern Appalachia, donate here.