Tag Archives: Pass on the Gift

NOW I Pass On The Gift

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NOW PSA photoPassing on the Gift® (POG) is fundamental to our work. It creates a cycle of giving, transforming recipients into donors, and expanding the network of hope, dignity and self-reliance.

For our project participants, it is a joyful experience to pass on the gift of livestock and training. Stories about Heifer’s POGs, like those below, can be found on our website. What amazes me most is that many project participants don’t stop after passing on gifts just once.

They do this by continuing to pass on the gifts of livestock, opening their farms to be training facilities, sharing the training they receive with everyone they meet, and more. They take to heart what it truly means to Pass on the Gift. They are so thankful and proud that they can’t help but tell others.

It is humbling to see project participants pass on part of their livelihood to their neighbors in need, creating a web of support and a world of good. We will end hunger together.

nowTransforming Recipients into Donors
The goats Manamaya received from Heifer raised her family income and allowed her husband to stay home to work, expanding their goat farm. She passed on two goat kids to women in her community to help them create a better life for their families. Read more.

Cambodia Celebrates Passing on the Gift®

In March, the Disability Development Services Program Organization in Cambodia hosted their Passing on the Gift ceremony where children performed traditional dances and recited poems about the hope they have for a better future. Read more.

Passing on the Gift® Has Ripple Effect

Several 4-H Club coordinators in the Philippines learned about Heifer’s 12 Cornerstones for Just and Sustainable Development and realized that their work is part of Passing on the Gift®. They help move the youth in their communities to get involved in productive agricultural and economic activities. Read more.

Start a new cycle of giving today.

Now We Call Our Milk ‘The Salary’

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nowFaith Onyango lives with her husband, Sam, and their children in Ulafu village in Western Kenya. When they married in 2000, they couldn’t afford to buy a house so his father helped them build a small hut with a grass roof and mud walls, which they lived in from 2001 to 2009. “We were seen as such poor people,” Faith said.

Faith is caring for a large family at a young age. They have four children – Reagan, 8, Ronny, 6, Sandra, 3, and Pamela, 1, and care for Judith, 13, who was orphaned when her parents died suddenly in 2010. Fortunately, Faith joined the Osiepe Women’s Group in 2006 and later received a heifer that she named Bahati, which means lucky in Kiswahili.

Faith's family

Faith, Sam, Judith, Ronny and Sandra pose with Bahati, the family cow.
Photo by Russell Powell

Before she joined the women’s group, a typical meal for this family consisted of mix greens and ugali (stiff corn meal porridge). Meat was expensive and they were lucky if they could eat it once a month. Sam had to search for jobs far from home to make enough income for their family, and he would go long periods without seeing them.

Now, Sam works at home farming. He credits Heifer for the manure and the training. “Heifer taught me how to do the nine maize holes,” Sam said. This technique for planting corn requires the farmer to plant nine corn seeds in a cluster a couple of inches below the ground using a mixture of soil and manure to better capture water and help the plants grow. This allows farmers to add more fertilizer as the plants grow. “He is now self-employed,” Faith said. “He is very happy.”

Improving their crop production has not only improved their diet, but has increased their income. Before joining the project, they would sell their kale, tomatoes, chili peppers and sugar cane for roughly $2.40 per week. Now they earn $24-$36 per week.

Faith's cassava fields

Faith, Judith, Ronny and Sandra work in the cassava fields.
Photo by Russell Powell

They also sell extra milk for an additional $71-$83 per week. Bahati produces an average of five and a half gallons of milk a day. The family consumes between a half-gallon and a gallon of milk and sells the remaining. “We call our milk ‘the salary’,” Sam said. Faith sees that her children are now stronger with this steady supply of milk. She remembers when Ronny contracted the measles. The doctor prescribed milk and eggs three times a day to help him eat and gain back the weight he had lost. Without Bahati, it would have been impossible for him to drink enough milk.

Now, Faith and Sam send their children to a private school where she feels they are encouraged and motivated more. They have also built a new house, bought additional animals for their farm and took a family vacation to Kisumu for an agricultural festival. They enjoyed seeing farmers and livestock from across East Africa. Faith and Sam invested most of their income into their farm, buying improved breeds of chickens and pigs, animal feed and a motorcycle to transport their milk, eggs and produce to the market.

They are actively Passing on the Gift® of knowledge and animals. Faith passed on Bahati’s first calf to her neighbor Lillian Oyuga. “Because someone brought the idea of passing on, now I have benefited and more families will benefit from passing on,” she said. Sam is passing on the knowledge and training he received to other farmers in his community. Sam began to train so many farmers that he decided to go school to get his certificate in adult education.

Ronny and Sandra drink milk

Now Ronny and Sandra have enough milk to drink so they can grow up healthy.
Photo by Russell Powell

Faith equates nutrition with health and income with self-reliance. She and Sam are proud of what they’ve accomplished by joining this project. They can now meet their family’s needs and help others. “Heifer is doing wonderful work,” Sam said.

Join Heifer’s life-changing work now.

From the Field: Heifer Shines While Giving Back

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

Poverty does not always look the same everywhere. With guidance from Heifer International’s Genuine Need and Justice Cornerstone, project participants and partners continue giving back to those who most need it. From Passing on the Gift® to gala fundraisers, Heifer shines when people work together to end hunger and poverty and care for the earth.

Manamaya Nepali and her son with their family's goats. Photo courtesy of Heifer International

Manamaya Nepali and her son with their family’s goats. Photo courtesy of Heifer International

 

 

After she received two goats from Heifer Nepal, Manamaya’s family began the journey from recipients to donors. Animal Management training prepared her for the hard work ahead and paid off when the family’s income increased after selling goat meat. Manamaya has already given back to her community by passing on two goats to another family.

Heifer Uganda was recognized as the 2013 Best Anti-Poverty Organization in Uganda for their investment in bettering the nation’s goods, services, worker’s rights, international practices, environmental protection and daily operation standards. Communities are being transformed through sustainable development as Heifer Uganda staff actively pursue positive change. The award affirms Heifer’s dedication and credibility to many.

2013

The first Heifer Charity Gala in China raised about $96,500. Photo courtesy of Heifer China

Heifer China supporters raised about $96,500 during the Heifer Charity Gala on March 23, 2013. An auction, celebrity performances and donations contributed the the evening’s success. Mao Zhenghua, chairman of Heifer China’s Advisory Council, shared how Heifer is giving back to make profound changes for the nation’s families and communities.

Learn how you can join Heifer in giving back

Fill Your Easter Basket With Last-Minute Gifts

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Are you searching for that last-minute gift to fill your Easter basket? Why not give chicks or rabbits or a goat?

Photo by Olivier Asselin

Photo by Olivier Asselin

Through Heifer, the gift of livestock and training can help “hatch hope” with a family living in hunger and poverty. A gift to Heifer is a hand up to a family in need. Along with animals, recipients receive training in animal husbandry, sustainable agriculture, nutrition, gender equity and more. But it doesn’t end there.

By Passing on the Gift®, each Heifer recipient becomes a donor when they pass on the skills and training they’ve received as well as their animal’s first born to another family in need. This cycle of hope lasts long beyond the chocolate and Easter eggs.

Whether you’re filling an Easter basket for a child or an adult, a gift to Heifer is a great way to spread hope this Easter.

Gift Different. Give Heifer.

Double Your Impact To Multiply Income

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This month, you can double your impact with a donation for families like Maria Elsa’s in Honduras.

Maria is the President of Empresa Asociativa Maranonera del Sur (Southern Cashew Enterprise Association) – a project promoting entrepreneurial activities and providing rural women with additional income. After working on their own for 21 years, the women saw things begin to change in 2005 when 22 families received heifers from Heifer International. In 2009, they received chickens and have completed two rounds of Passing on the Gift®.

Maria Elsa

Photo by Russell Powell, courtesy of Heifer International

Seeing the positive results from these first two projects, the women wanted to try something a bit more ambitious. “We wanted something more to do to generate more income,” Maria said. From this, the Southern Cashew Enterprise Association was born. Heifer provided the materials and hired builders to construct the storage rooms and ovens for this cashew enterprise, while the community provided the labor. Heifer provided 200 cashew tree seedlings, and helped the women to market their cashews.

In 2012, a drought destroyed most of the corn harvest. The cashew business, however, along with the ability to sell eggs and milk from their livestock, provided additional income for the families in Maria’s village. Maria gets almost four gallons of milk a day; she uses one gallon for her family and sells the rest.

The family is grateful to have received the cow. Victoriano Gonzalez, Maria’s husband, said, “I never expected to see a cow in my yard and now we have four.”

Maria and her family

Photo by Russell Powell, courtesy of Heifer International

Along with the animal gifts, project participants received a variety of trainings including marketing, gender equity, jelly production, chicken and cattle feed production and Heifer’s 12 Cornerstones for Just and Sustainable Development. Now, while the women work, their husbands have taken over more of the household chores.

“Now our husbands bring us food while we are working,” Maria said. She’s excited about the opportunity to pass on her training and her animal’s first newborn to another community member. “Passing on the Gift® is a chain that multiplies and won’t be broken. I was so happy when I received my cow. I imagined that other women would feel the same.”

For Maria and her family, the biggest improvement has been to their diet. Before becoming involved in the Heifer project, their typical meal consisted of beans and rice. They could only buy eggs twice a week. “Now we have more chickens so we don’t have to buy eggs,” she said. Milk was also hard to get, but now they have milk and can use it to make cheese.

Maria, whose children are grown, lives with two of her grandchildren. “They help feed the chickens, carry water and clean the pens,” she said. Maria and Victoriano hope their grandchildren have a better life. “I want them to continue their studies until they are professionals. They are very intelligent.”

Double your impact in Honduras

Maria’s grandkids, Elmer and Lisbe, help take care of the animals.
Photo by Russell Powell, courtesy of Heifer International

Heifer’s past successes show that projects like this make a widespread and lasting difference. In 2008, Western Michigan University Evaluation Center conducted an independent evaluation of Heifer’s work in Honduras. It said that Heifer International in Honduras has had a significant positive impact on the communities in which it operates, empowering people at the family and community level.

Your donation this month will be matched dollar-for-dollar to support food security, better nutrition and women’s empowerment for a new project in Lempira, Honduras, thanks to a generous benefactor and international partners. To maximize this match, we need to raise at least $831,000 from generous supporters like you.

Click here to donate and help families to improve their lives.

Last Week to Pass on the Gift in Peru with Garnet Hill

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Over the last few weeks, we’ve told you about a unique chance take a special trip and Pass on the Gift in Peru with our corporate partner Garnet Hill. 

For nearly 30 years, Garnet Hill has worked with like-minded organizations to improve communities and better peoples’ lives. They are now providing an opportunity to send one lucky person and a guest to Peru to see Heifer’s work firsthand on the trip of a lifetime. You have until March 12th at 11:59 p.m. to enter Pass on the Gift with Garnet Hill.

So how do you Pass on the Gift in Peru? Check out our how-to enter blog here. 

Learn more about this amazing opportunity from Garnet Hill.

Note: The above link will take you to Garnet Hill’s website in a new window.

Double Your Impact In Guatemala

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Double your impact on hunger now! Thanks to a generous benefactor and international partners, your donation to Heifer International will be matched dollar-for-dollar during March to support food security, better nutrition and women’s empowerment in Guatemala.

Double your impact for people like Virginia Jimenez Mateo, who knows firsthand how women living in rural areas can become isolated and marginalized. She lives in the remote village of Laguna Verde, Guatemala, with her husband Mauricio and their seven sons.

Virginia Jimenez Mateo, Guatemala

Photo by Russell Powell, courtesy of Heifer International

Before joining a Heifer project in 2007, Virginia seldom left her house since women do most of the farm labor and household chores. She rarely had the opportunity to get to know other women in her community apart from church activities. “The only time I left my house was to go to church and back,” she said.

Virginia primarily prepared beans, steamed broccoli or carrots for meals. They had to buy eggs from their neighbors and could only afford meat twice a month. She recalls that 14-year-old Mario had stomach problems.

Since joining the project, she has received training along with 10 chickens in 2007 and a goat in 2011. She especially likes Passing on the Gift®. “It would be hard for me to save enough money to repay a goat, but when mine (kid born on February 14, 2012) is big enough I can pass it on,” she said, having already passed on the gift of chickens in 2008.

Heifer’s training improved life in the community. Training provided opportunities for the local women to get to know each other. “No one can take away the knowledge we received,” she said. Thanks to the gender training, the men have started participating. With more help around the house, Virginia’s family started to thrive.

Edwin Gonzalez Jimenez, Guatemala

“Part of the training was teaching my children than they can do anything a woman can do,” Virginia said.
Photo by Russell Powell, courtesy of Heifer International

The biggest benefit for her family, Virginia said, was their improved diet and nutrition. They raise their own chickens, so they no longer have to buy eggs and can now afford to buy meat once a week. “Now we have more variety,” she said. She noticed that they aren’t as sick as before. She credits drinking goat’s milk for her improved health and less aches in her joints.

Better nutrition means her sons have more energy to focus on their school work. Miguel, age 19, and Carlos, age 16, received scholarships to attend a Catholic school. “The knowledge and ethics they are receiving are important,” she said.

This kind of impact happens every day in Heifer projects. Stretch your dollar this month and double your impact to help provide the training and livestock needed by families like Virginia’s to help put more food on the table.

To maximize this match, we need to raise at least $831,000 from generous supporters like you.

Click here to donate.

Pass on the Gift in Peru with Garnet Hill and Heifer

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Pass on the Gift in Peru

For nearly 30 years, Garnet Hill has worked with like-minded organizations to improve communities and better peoples’ lives. And for nearly 70 years, Heifer International has worked with communities around the world to end hunger and poverty and care for the Earth. It is this shared desire to strengthen communities, at home and abroad, that forged the partnership between the distinguished catalog merchandiser and the global humanitarian organization.

In 2009 Garnet Hill asked their customers’ opinion on what charitable initiative they would choose to support. The number one choice was the elimination of hunger, and Heifer became the natural choice. With their customers’ generous support, Garnet Hill has made significant contributions to Heifer’s work around the world.

Now, Garnet Hill has developed a promotion to send one lucky person and a guest to Peru to see Heifer’s work firsthand on the trip of a lifetime — while also making a difference in the lives of others. Work hand in hand with Heifer International to foster sustainable development in the ancient Incan Empire capital of Cuzco, and learn about the country’s colorful culture through exclusive guided tours.

Learn more about an amazing opportunity from Garnet Hill.

Note: The above link will take you to Garnet Hill’s website in a new window.

Heifer Number 20 in Top 100 NGOs

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Top 100 NGOs Global JournalHeifer International is pleased to rank in the top tier—Number 20—in the second edition of the Global Journal’s Top 100 NGOs. The editors cited Heifer’s Passing on the Gift® as an important component to “ensure project sustainability, develop community and enhance self-esteem by allowing project partners to become donors.”

“We are proud to be included in the Global Journal’s list and proud of the work we do with our families everyday,” said Pierre Ferrari, president and CEO of Heifer International. “We are working with our smallholder farmers, many of them women, to move from dependence to a life of economic entrepreneurship connecting them to markets and building their social capital.”

Heifer Top 100 NGOs

Photo by Jake Lyell, courtesy of Heifer International.

The Global Journal reports that Heifer International has a “highly participatory model” that works with communities and has a “substantive impact on household incomes, assets and family nutrition.”

With approximately 450 NGOs reviewed, the Global Journal focused on three areas: impact, innovation and sustainability. This year, editors chose the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) as their number one choice.

Aquaculture: The Gift of Fish for Life!

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Tanzania aquaculture

Nicholas Mwakabelele took the spirit of Passing on the Gift to the extreme by giving tens of thousands of fish fingerlings away to his neighbors, including a blind man who once asked for a handout. Photo by Dave Anderson, courtesy of Heifer International.

Aquaculture, or the raising of fish under controlled conditions, accounts for half of the world’s food fish. In Heifer’s aquaculture projects, participants receive the gift of fish fingerlings and training in farming techniques specific to their area of the world. Such a gift very quickly improves family nutrition with the lean healthy protein of fish such as tilapia.

Plus, it’s easy to sell fish for income so families can achieve financial independence and Pass on the Gift of fingerlings to empower entire communities. One of Heifer’s most inspiring stories of Passing on the Gift comes from a fish-farming project in Mambi village, Tanzania, where Heifer participant Nicholas Mwakabelele (above), was the first in the area to become successful at fish farming. He often got requests from neighbors who wanted to buy a few fish for dinner, but when he met neighbor Wailos Nzalayaluma (below), both of their lives would forever change.

Tanzania aquaculture

Disease blinded Wailos Nzalayaluma before he could finish school. He is now able to provide income for himself and his mother through fish farming. Photo by Dave Anderson, courtesy of Heifer International.

Wailos is blind, and he asked Nicholas to give him a few fish for his family’s dinner. But Nicholas had a better idea. Instead, he helped Wailos build his own fish pond and then donated fish fingerlings to him so he could grow his own and never be hungry again. The two continue to work side by side as fish farmers in the community. Read their full story here in Heifer’s World Ark magazine.

Heifer currently supports 63 aquaculture projects in 10 countries including Brazil, Ecuador, Honduras, Haiti, Estonia, Thailand, China, Philippines, Cambodia and Tanzania.

Give now to help families like these in Tanzania start their own aquaculture projects.

This post is part of our What to Give series, where we’re helping you choose the best Heifer gift for your loved ones. Read previous What to Give posts here, and subscribe to the What to Give series here.

Still don’t know what to give? Visit our full catalog page here.