Tag Archives: Poverty

Volunteers Make a World of Difference

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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

Agriculture Improves Incomes in Central America

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Heifer's President and CEO Pierre Ferrari celebrates with project participants during a Passing on the Gift® ceremony in Guatemala. Photo courtesy of Heifer International

Heifer’s President and CEO Pierre Ferrari celebrates with project participants during a Passing on the Gift® ceremony in Guatemala. Photo courtesy of Heifer International

Heifer is working with communities in Honduras and Guatemala to create livestock and agriculture businesses, which help residents overcome poverty and malnutrition. Pierre Ferrari, Heifer’s President and CEO, visited these projects in March 2013 and attended a Passing on the Gift® (POG) ceremony in Guatemala. There, project participants gave him a goat to symbolize their gift to Heifer to pass on to communities around the world.

How is Poverty Measured?

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Having traveled to the field for my work with Heifer, I’ve seen true poverty firsthand. Heck, I can find poverty within my own neighborhood. So I know what it looks like. But just how is it measured?

Poverty in Uganda

Photo by Brooke Edwards, courtesy of Heifer International.

The World Bank, which measures a lot of data points in more than 200 countries and has a very thorough website specifically for sharing their data, has a video that explains how they measure poverty.

It’s important to measure things that you’d like to end. If we’re going to end poverty, we have to know where we’re starting from. But I feel like this video really leaves some major considerations out. It appears income and consumption are the primary measures of wellbeing. So, once a family earns enough income and consumes enough goods, they’re considered “above” the poverty line. But are they really out of poverty? Just how easily can they fall right back “below” the poverty line?

At Heifer, we work hard to ensure our participants – individuals, families and communities – truly move out of poverty so they aren’t likely to fall back into poverty. We do this by helping them build assets, grow savings and develop real security. These accomplishments allow them to be more resilient to things like natural disasters or an illness in the family.

Freedom from poverty in Malawi.

Freedom from poverty in Malawi. Photo by Jake Lyell, courtesy of Heifer International.

What do you think about how poverty is measured? What else seems to be missing? Tell us in the comments section below.

Heifer and Partners Will Go Farther Together

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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

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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!

United Nations Day 2012

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Today is United Nations Day, a day that celebrates the creation of the United Nations (UN), 67 years ago. Many people are familiar with the UN’s role as peacekeepers, but I wonder just how many know that the UN also works in the area of fundamental issues such as sustainable development, environment protection, gender equality and the advancement of women, and economic and social development.

United Nations Day: Pierre Ferrari in Nepal

Photo courtesy of Heifer International.

Sound familiar? Although Heifer has many successes to share in these areas, to see larger changes as a result of our efforts, we cannot do this work alone, and we are more successful when working with partners helping us advance our mission. I recently wrote a blog post, “Collective Impact Necessary to End Hunger and Poverty,” that demonstrates how bringing together nonprofits, governments, the public, private and commercial businesses can increase the scale and impact of our work.

When I traveled through Asia, through our country programs’ networking efforts, we were able to meet with government officials and members of organizations such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to discuss how our approach of helping people obtain a sustainable source of food and income aligned with their efforts. These meetings were key to creating alliances in the areas were we work.

United Nations Day: Pierre Ferrari in Nepal

Photo courtesy of Heifer International.

But it is more than what we can do for these partners or what they can do for us – it is what we can accomplish together. Our focus is and always will be what we can do for struggling families who desire a better life.

In Nepal I met with families who lived among the beautiful hills of the Kabilash village and yet struggled to find the next meals for themselves and their children. They are now just receiving training, but they have hope that Heifer will support their efforts to become self-sufficient.

In this same visit I also met with families who have been involved in a Heifer project for more than two and a half years, and the contrast was amazing. The 200+ women involved have formed a cooperative with legal status and have elevated their training and new confidence to much more ambitious goals. Their success has increased interest from local government and additional organizations. I know we can replicate this example many times over by working collectively.

United Nations Day: Pierre Ferrari in Nepal

Photo courtesy of Heifer International.

So today, as we recognize the creation of the United Nations, I reflect on the words of Heifer participant, Jag Kuwen Magar, who said, “It is easier for us to bring about change when we are in groups. Our ancestors say that if groups are together, then villages are together, and if villages are together, then the country is better.” I’d like to expand on this thought and say that if countries are together, the world is better.

Would you like to help Heifer’s efforts to make this world a better place? You can find ways to give on our website. 

Smallholder Farmers Will Feed The World

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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

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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

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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.

Tiwah’s Hope for a Better Future

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Thai New Year (Songkran) has just ended, and after Thai and other ethnic groups living in Thailand celebrated the long holiday, life is now back to normal. Like other families, Tiwah Subsawanya’s family celebrated Thai New Year (or water festival); however, one of their sons had an accident during Songkran.

The day Heifer Thailand staff visited the family, they were organizing a blessing ceremony for their last child Nithipat Subsawanya, who is 7 years old. Nithipat fell off the car during the water festival, but he is still a cheerful boy.  His wound is getting much better day after day, and the doctor’s appointment to take out the stitches is within a few days. “We consulted with the village’s spiritual leader, he suggested we organize the blessing ceremony for our son,” says the family’s father of four children, Korla Subsawanya.

Amidst the bad luck, Tiwah’s family got a new family member.  Her first daughter gave birth to a new baby boy, who is now three months old.  They named the boy Tokipo, which means “little parrot” in the Karen ethnic language.

Also, the sow they received from Heifer gave birth to 10 piglets, but due to the sow’s health she cannot produce enough milk to feed her ten babies, resulting in one piglet’s death. For this, Tiwah and her husband Korla decided to move their sow and piglets to raise at Korla’s younger brother’s pen. They hope that by changing to a new environment and bigger pen their pigs will be healthier.

Now is summer so Tiwah’s family is preparing the ground for the upcoming cultivation season. Tiwah and Korla are clearing cabbages from the previous cultivation and will grow peanuts soon. They also prepare the rice fields for approaching rainy season. The rice crop is for their family’s consumption while cabbages and peanuts are for sale. Even though their cabbages are yielding a crop now, they decided to clear up the land because it is not worth hiring the truck to carry the cabbages to the market since their village is located on the mountain about two hours from the city. “Hiring a truck will cost about 2,000 Baht a day including gasoline, so it’s not worth selling the crop since cabbage price is very low now,” says Tiwah Subsawanya.

In terms of project activity, recently Tiwah attended an organic farming exposure trip where  she learned to make organic pesticides from local herbs. After the trip she shared this knowledge with her husband. “We haven’t started to apply the knowledge yet because it is off farming season, but we are planning to use it during the upcoming farming season. I’m sure it will help reduce cost of farming if we use herbs as the substitute of chemicals.” Korla says.

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. Today’s post is the second in a series of  quarterly updates on the progress of Tiwah Subsawanya and her family. You can read the first post about this family here.