Tag Archives: rural

Heifer Inspires Rural Youth to Stay Put

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The migration of young people from rural areas to urban in the hope of a better future is common worldwide. This is understandable in many ways, but it can have negative effects overall (urban slums; overloaded urban infrastructure; and an absence of young rural innovators, farmers, caretakers, etc.) What we’ve often seen in our work, however, is that young people engaged in Heifer projects often choose to stay in their rural communities. Doing so allows them to not only remain with their families, but also give back to the community that helped raise them. Clara Alanya of Peru is a great example of this phenomenon.

Clara Alanya is a young leader who has made a difference in her community. Her view of rural life and devotion to her work have enabled her to rise above the exclusion and chauvinism still common in the small farming community of Buenos Aires in Huancavelica, the poorest region in Peru.

Clara grew up in a family that imbued its members with strong values. The oldest of five children, Clara says she felt it was her responsibility to set a good example for her siblings.

When she was 19, her father took her to all the training workshops that the Peruvian Social Studies Center organized in their community. In those workshops, Clara began to think about the potential for development in her community and the possibilities for emphasizing local production and strengthening rural community organizations.

Certain that happiness and success are not to be found only in large cities, she decided to stay and take advantage of all the workshops offered in her community, unlike many young people who migrate to work outside their communities, scorning rural life.

“I went to all the workshops about how to build improved stoves, raise guinea pigs, keep a family garden and raise chickens, and my family and I made changes to our house to make it a healthy home. Now I know all about how to build an improved stove. My neighbors ask me to teach them, and I do it with pleasure.

At such a young age, however, it wasn’t easy to convince others to recognize her leadership. She had to persevere, participating in community assemblies, before she was respected as an outstanding young member of the community.

In 2010, she began participating in a Heifer project called Training Communities to Exercise their Rights to Natural Resources. Clara and other promoters from 40 rural communities received training on legal issues, developing skills for defending rights related to land ownership, water use, food security and climate change.

Clara now shares her knowledge voluntarily, facilitating workshops in her community and neighboring communities.

“I used to be afraid to talk in front of a group, but I lost my fear little by little, thanks to the training workshops. I’ve gained more confidence with the Heifer project, because the facilitators trust me. Now when older people say, ‘Why is she going to teach us? She’s so young!’ I don’t even resent it, because many people do support me and I show them everything I’ve learned.

Clara’s family has also become an example tot he entire community, confronting poverty with perseverance, understanding, and above all, family unity.

“What we do in my family is talk things over. My parents don’t make any decisions without consulting all the members of the family. That way we all agree, and we support each other in everything.

Now 23, Clara is a young woman with many dreams, who is committed to working for her community. She has shown that the most important step toward progress is to shake off the lethargy brought on by conformity and hopelessness, and envision a better future.

In Praise of Rural Women

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Today is International Day of Rural Women. In honor of the rural women with whom Heifer works, Elizabeth Bintliff, regional director of Heifer’s West Africa Program, wrote the following post.


Say the word “rural” and it conjures up all kindsof images, some positive and some negative; vast expenses of land, no modernfacilities, illiterate or ignorant people, poor, agrarian, scarce and more.When you put the word in the context of a developing country, and add thegender dimension, one begins to understand the enormous challenges that ruralwomen face.

It is for all these reasons and more that the UNGeneral Assembly established the International Day of Rural Women in 2008 to becelebrated on the eve of World Food Day. This day commemorates what the UN characterizes as “the critical roleand contribution of rural women, including indigenous women, in enhancingagricultural and rural development, improving food security and eradicatingrural poverty.”


For all the challenges they face, rural women stillhave to feed and sustain their children and families against innumerable odds. Theirdays often begin earlier than the sun rises and end long after the sun sets. Inbetween, they are fetching water – often across great distances, usuallybalancing heavy vessels on their heads, gathering firewood for fuel, workinghunched-over on farms to grow food using rudimentary implements, sometimes withbabies tied precariously on their backs. Life for rural women can be especiallydifficult, and the rewards of their labor are usually small.

The good news is that creating a better livelihoodfor rural women often requires little investment. The key ingredient is simply opportunity.

TakeDiana Asua, a 37-year-old wife and mother of three children, for example. Shelives in a rural community of Santa in Cameroon and is her husband’s secondwife. In addition to her own children, she is raising the six children of herco-wife, who is now diseased.


Dianadescribes herself 11 years ago as “a mere housewife who depended on my husbandtotally for everything about my upkeep and that of the family.  I was also engaged in farming, as any villagewoman would do.”


Agift of pigs from Heifer in 2007 turned things around for her. Soon, theavailability of manure meant better farm production, there we pigs to fattenand sell, there was income to pay for school fees and medical bills. There wasa path out of poverty. Inthe time since she first received her animals she’s sold 116 pigs and manykilos of vegetables.

“Ihave collected at least 120 bags or 12,000 kg of manure from my pigsty. If Iwere to buy this manure, it would have cost at least 480,000FCFA ($898.50). I nowproduce corn, beans and Irish potatoes on the same half hectare of farm andhave gotten another half hectare for cabbage, leeks and carrots. I started allof this after having gotten seeds from Heifer. I harvest at least 1000kg ofcorn, 50kg of beans, 150kg of Irish potatoes, 6,000kg of cabbage, 2000kg ofcarrots and 750kg of leaks yearly. All of these were reserved just for menbefore; now look at where I am as a woman.”

Lifeis tough for rural women. It takes a great amount of industrial spirit to eke alife in places where there is so little. Yet, a large percentage of the worlddoes it every day, in the remote recesses of the earth, in places that areoften un-named and uncharted.

Soit is meaningful that on the International Day of Rural Woman we all pausefor a moment to recognize the brave, industrious women who make it happen. It’simportant that we look at them, if only for a day but hopefully for longer andsay to them: “We see you, you are making a meaningful contribution to the world, and we acknowledge you.“

Heifer Makes Commitment at CGI Annual Meeting

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New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (left) greets Heifer International President and CEO Pierre Ferrari at the announcement of Heifer’s $18.7 million Haiti commitment during the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in New York.


We got some pretty exciting news today at Heifer. Our commitment to help rebuild rural communities and to improve economic opportunities in Haiti was chosen to be part of the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting. CEO Pierre Ferrari announced Heifer International’s commitment from the stage today.

The commitment will help 20,250 families increase their incomes by combining livestock and crop inputs for integrated farming, improved husbandry techniques, business training and community-building. The project —REACH, or Rural Entrepreneurs for Agricultural Cooperation in Haiti — will develop 150 breeding centers and provide training for 120 community health workers who, in turn, will train an average of 200 farmers each.

Under Heifer International’s five-year, $18.7-million commitment, Heifer Haiti will work with farming families, aid organizations, producers’ groups, municipalities, ministries and others to rehabilitate and strengthen the crop- and livestock-based livelihoods for farming families in Haiti’s Northwest, Northeast, Nippes, Grand Anse, Central Plateau and Southeast departments.

The project will include goats, cattle, poultry and pigs. Participants will use integrated farming to improve production and strengthen linkages with buyers and others, such as input suppliers, processors and transporters. Heifer will select the most successful farmers from its training program and provide them with additional support to start up 150 family-run centers to provide breeding services and an increased supply of quality animals in strategic regions.

A key element of the project will be to encourage farmers to view their livestock production as a business, which can become a sustainable source of income.

The breeding centers are expected to create 300 full-time jobs, and Heifer estimates incomes of project farmers and breeding center owners will increase between 100 percent and 220 percent over the current $50 per month average.

This commitment meets all three topic areas for this year’s CGI program — jobs, sustainable consumption and empowering girls and women—all of which are key components of our model.

We hope the enterprise will serve as a model for the state to consider for replication, key to igniting the kind of transformation Haiti needs to become self-sustaining. Three hundred full-time jobs will be created and more than 83,000 will benefit indirectly.

REACH will revitalize rural areas by providing economic opportunities so farmers won’t have to migrate to urban centers. The plan will particularly target youth, who are increasingly leaving rural areas for work, leading to an “aging” countryside.
  
Livestock constitutes 30 percent of Haiti’s agricultural production and 26 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Heifer’s commitment will train farmers to better manage their livestock and to integrate them into a true farming system that provides protein, draft power and fertilizer to improve diet and nutrition and agricultural productivity.


In the video below, Heifer Haiti country director Hervil Cherubin shares more about this exciting new initiative.



The People’s Farmers Markets

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You know the scene: women in yoga pants cruise between tables of heirloom tomatoes, and couples walking their miniature dogs load canvas bags with local produce while a street musician hammers away on steel drums. You can find scenes like this easily these days as people latch on to the benefits of eating fresh foods grown sustainably. This urban, upper-crusty Saturday morning pastime isn’t the only kind of farmers market thriving these days, though.

As the economy continues to sputter along, people in rural America are tending gardens, preserving what they can’t eat right away and sharing or selling the rest. Unlike with urban farmers markets where prices are often higher than in grocery stores, rural shoppers are looking for bargains.

The New York Times reported recently on this trend, noting that garden stores are reporting more business and many community gardens have waiting lists for plots. Gardeners with surplus unload the extras for a good price, and buyers freeze, can, dry and pickle to make their produce last.

I saw an example of this recently in Hughes, Ark., where a city-sponsored community garden brimmed with tidy rows of corn, perfectly-staked tomatoes and sweet peppers that looked like Christmas ornaments. Volunteers worked together on the garden and shared the harvest with all takers. City leaders dream of expanding the community garden enough to produce excess that can be sold.

This story is a good reminder that even though locavorism is trendy these days and bank-breaking fruit and vegetables are easy to come by, old-fashioned gardening doesn’t have to be pricey and can, in fact, be quite practical. Of course, Heifer project participants in the United States and around the world know this already.

Allin Kausay

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Good Living. That’s what Allin Kausay means. It’s the name of a Heifer Peru project in the Cusco region of Peru. This project, which is only about five months in, plans to contribute to improved food systems and living conditions for 1,540 families. Heifer does this by helping them plan the management of their resources, implement agroecology, link to local markets, and involve them in processes that impact local and regional policies for rural families.

Friday morning we visited Dolores Delgado on her farm in the Huachanccay community about an hour from Cusco. Dolores’ farm is small, but very well organized and well-kept. In just the short five-month life of the project’s activities, the practical benefits of agroecological production are clear. In the next four or five years, Dolores intends to be a certified agroecological producer. She is already one of the biggest sellers of guinea pigs in the areal. Right now, she gets about $8 per guinea pig. Once she’s certified, she’ll get nearly $15 per. To earn even higher an income, Dolores will be able to sell an organic breeding male guinea pig for $36 each.

Have a look at her farm:

Heifer Peru and Headquarters staff arrive at Dolores’ farm.

Common on Heifer participants’ farms are project-related murals,
painted with colored clays. A plastered building for guinea pigs is a big deal here.

Cuy Breeding “Happy Little Farm”
A sign welcomes us into Delores’ guinea pig room.

We must step in ash before entering the guinea pig house so we don’t bring in contaminants.

Wire on the ceiling helps keep rats and weasels away from the guinea pigs.

Dolores shows us her guinea pig cages, which her son helped her build.
There are metal pans under all of the cages to allow for the collection of manure.

The pipes in the back allow Dolores to capture urine, which is high in nitrogen.

Dolores shows us a breakdown of her guinea pig production in terms of inputs, costs and profits.

Dolores shows us the nutritional breakdown of guinea pigs, which are highly nutritious.

Dolores grows fodder for her guinea pigs. She has a basket of ryegrass and barley.

Dolores also makes regular feed for her animals.

In addition to saving money by growing and processing fodder and food for her guinea pigs,
Dolores also cuts costs by making her own medecine. She keeps her animals very healthy,
so they don’t often require medecine at all. What she’s holding is a salve for grass cuts they sometimes get.

Pierre Ferrari gets to hold a guinea pig.

Dolores is so proud of her farm and pleased to show it off to us.

Dolores practices worm composting with guinea pig manure.

Once the compost is ready, Dolores ferments it with water in a drum.
The jug is full of what we would call “compost tea.”

Dolores’ husband uses a basic sprayer to distribute the compost tea.

Using organic fertilizer is already paying off. These are fodder crops for the guinea pigs.

They’ve also used the fertilizer on their family vegetable garden with great success.

And what would a Peruvian farm (or street, for that matter) be without a sleeping dog?

Why Work Local

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Chief Musa didn’t like animals messing up his village. “They compete with the farmers for their crops, they mess up the village. I don’t want them here.”

But that was before he met Rashid Sesay, Country Director for Heifer International in Sierra Leone. Rashid explained how Heifer emphasizes zero grazing, where animals inhabit pens that are safe, well ventilated and beneficial for the animals. Farmers bring fresh, nutritious food and water to the animals, and still allow them to get plenty of exercise outside the pen (without running rampant over Chief Musa’s nice, clean village).

Six months after goats were placed in Siama village, Rashid visited Chief Musa again. He found that the chief himself had been converted and kept goats of his own—in pens, of course. “I trust you; you are my best friend now,” the chief told Rashid.

It’s a simple thing, really, but this illustration demonstrates a much larger and more complex concept: working locally. Heifer realizes that it’s important to get the buy-in of a community before we go to work. In fact, we only go where we’re invited. And we insist that the communities themselves set goals and procedures. From there, we help the communities facilitate development themselves (there are a whole lot more of them than there are of us, after all).

And that’s really one of the great beauties of the Heifer model; we don’t just drop off a bag of rice or a few goats and leave a community to fend for itself. We give communities the training and the tools to bring themselves up out of poverty. We don’t just ask communities what they think; we involve them and make them part of the process—and the solution. The result is that people take ownership and pride in what they’re doing, and are able finally to feed themselves and restore their own human dignity.

Just ask Chief Musa.

Bill Fitzgerald is Heifer International’s creative director. You can read his previous posts about project visits in Sierra Leone here. 


Biogas is Important for Rural Children

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From my trip to Uganda, I was able to see firsthand why biogas is so important in poor rural communities. So far, I’ve shown you why it’s important for women and for the environment. Now, I’d like to show you why it’s important for rural children.

The very first farm we visited was that of Miriam and Wilberforce Muwonge in the Ntaawo Ward, Mukono District. Miriam and Wilberforce live with their three children and six grandchildren on about one acre of land. The family had already participated in a Heifer project, from which they received one dairy cow. They had little money for fuel for cooking and lighting, but they had plenty of cow manure. Since Heifer Uganda installed their biogas unit, they have been saving the equivalent of U.S. $10 a month on fuel costs. The children are not only able to attend school, but they are also able to study at night in their home.
In contrast, while driving to another field visit the next day, we passed three boys carrying loads of firewood on their heads. These were not the children or grandchildren of Heifer participants. They most likely do not get to attend school, because they are busy gathering firewood and probably water.
As a mother, I was understandably drawn to the children I saw on this trip. To see the difference Heifer makes in the lives of children was amazing. They look healthy, their clothes are cleaner, they go to school, they read books. The gifts of a dairy cow and a biogas unit, and the accompanying training, sure go a long way.

Saving Animals, Plants and People At the Same Time

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This week, members of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity are meeting in Japan to talk about how to protect the planet’s flora and fauna. It’s a noble and challenging goal, especially considering that they hope to do it without displacing or disenfranchising any of the world’s poor, 70 percent of whom live in rural areas and are therefore more likely to look to hunting, fishing and resource extraction for their livelihoods.

The online magazine Slate takes a look at this challenge today and considers ways that biodiversity can be preserved at the same time poverty is reduced. Agroforestry, in which trees and agriculture are integrated, is one solution that Heifer promotes in many of its projects. Protecting soil by planting trees simply makes sense for the farmers who rely on healthy soil to produce healthy crops. You can learn more about some Heifer’s work with partner Green Mountain Coffee to preserve biodiversity in Mexico in the Winter 2010 issue of World Ark magazine.

Read more about the Convention on Biological Diversity here.