Tag Archives: youth

Heifer Armenia: Working for Peace and Better Livelihoods

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From left: Pietro Turilli, Steve Denne, 

Knarine Ghazanchyan,  Mariam Asoyan and Arsen Mkrtchyan plan Heifer Armenia’s new initiatives.


by Liana Hayrapetyan and Emma Sargsyan

Steve Denne, Heifer International Chief Operating Officer, and Pietro Turilli, Vice President of Central and Eastern European programs, are traveling throughout Armenia this week. They’re visiting some of our existing projects and participating in planning meetings for an expansion of our anti-hunger initiatives here. They’ll be sharing more from their travels over the coming days, but in the meantime we want to help you get to know Heifer’s work in Armenia.

Heifer International has worked in Armenia since 1999 and now has 16 active projects covering more than 50 rural communities. We help smallholder farmers improve their livelihoods through sustainable agriculture practices, and we give them various plants and animals including cows, goats, sheep, beehives, rabbits, chickens, fish, turkeys, buffalos, bull calves, Californian worms, potato seeds, alfalfa seeds, wheat seeds, and fruit tree seedlings.

Our projects in Armenia are diverse and innovative. Heifer Armenia focuses on projects which include economic development as well as building capacity of community groups through a variety of trainings delivered by our professional staff and experts. Trainings relate to cattle breeding, horticulture, plant protection, artificial insemination, beekeeping, and animal husbandry. This leads to a network of self-reliant, economically-developed, effectively-cooperating healthy communities that live in peace and an ecologically- sound environment.
 

The value chain development methodology adopted by Heifer Armenia is aimed at establishing economically viable, efficient and sustainable linkages between different value chain (e.g. dairy) actors, thus creating lasting income generating opportunities for its target project participants and contributing to sustainable community development. Heifer Armenia works for improvement of the socio-economic situation of the vulnerable groups (men, women, boys and girls) through development of rural communities, finding solutions for economic and ecological problems, spiritual revival and strengthening peace in the region.

Heifer Armenia also pays serious attention to the youth in the country’s rural areas. Through cooperation with Development Principles NGO, Heifer Armenia has established and successfully runs 26 youth clubs that benefit more than 2,200 children annually. Heifer Armenia created a country-wide rural youth network that trains youth to be peer leaders and peer educators.

Read more about the exciting work Heifer International is doing in Armenia.

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.

Q&A with an 11-Year-Old Social Entrepreneur

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Hats for Hunger was founded in 2008 by Andrew Castle when he was 9 years old. He was inspired by a Heifer International catalog, and decided to make a difference himself. He combined his love of animals and knitting to start Hats for Hunger. We asked Andrew a few questions about his 2010 goal to raise $5,000 for a Gift Ark:

-Why did you choose Heifer International? For Christmas 2007, my grandparents let us chose an animal from the Heifer catalog. That was the first I had heard of Heifer and I loved the concept of providing people with the tools to improve their lives. Rather than a food handout, the gift of animals creates self-sustainability. A gift to Heifer has an exponential impact on the lives of communities. -How did you come up with the goal of 5k? The first year of Hats for Hunger, I raised $1,500. The second year, I had a lot of academic commitments and only raised $700 which I donated to the Vermont Foodbank. For 2010, I had a goal of $3,000, but Noland Hoshino (lead Heifer volunteer in Portland) got me excited about the idea of raising $5,000 to buy a gift ark.

-How did you learn to knit hats? I learned to knit when I was 7 as part of a school project. -Just how many hats have you made this past year? This past year, I haven’t knit any because the volunteer knitters have done such an amazing job! The first year of Hats for Hunger, my brother, mother and I knit all of the hats and it was overwhelming. $1,500 of hats is a LOT of hats! Many were custom hats, but the most fun was creating new designs. The most popular hat that year was the “valentine hat” with a heart on top.

-How many volunteer knitters are there? We have over 80 volunteer knitters/crocheters around the country (and one in England). They are an amazing group of people and have given so generously of their time and effort. We have a group on Ravelry.com which was started by Hannah, an amazing 9 year old in Minnesota. She and her family have donated over 100 hand knit hats to Hats for Hunger. Also, a group of knitters in Virginia called K1-D2 did a hat drive throughout the state at yarn stores and collected 297 hats. Fortunately, they arrived the day after Thanksgiving because they took over our dining room. -What is your favorite part about H4H? At first, it was knitting the hats and getting H4H started that was the most fun. Now it’s watching the growth of the company and seeing how many people are excited to get involved. In just a few months, we went from 150 Facebook friends to over 1,000! That has been pretty cool. (www.facebook.com/hatsforhunger)

-What goals do you have for 2011? My goal is to raise $10,000 for Heifer International. Also, I’d like to introduce a “Premium” line of hats this year. Many of the donated hats are made with high-end fibers (alpaca, cashmere, merino wool, etc) and have incredible handwork. They should sell for more than $20. I’d like to add a chart to the website to show how each hat helps to pay for animals via Heifer. For example, a $20 hat pays for a flock of chicks or ducks. A $30 hat pays for honeybees. A $10 hat buys a share of a pig, etc.

-If there is any additional information you’d like to add that would be great, too. 100% of profits goes directly to Heifer International. We have virtually no overhead since almost all of the hats and yarn are donated. Someone who buys a $20 hat is essentially getting a two for one deal. $20 goes to Heifer AND they get a cool hat. Also, our customers often buy extra hats to donate to homeless shelters and children’s homes.

Heifer Armenia’s YES! Youth Clubs

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Post by Sarah Tourville, international resource development officer for Heifer International

I was fortunate last week to take part in Heifer Armenia’s strategic planning workshop. The team has developed an ambitious, forward-thinking plan for the next five years to help more families in Armenia move from poverty to self-reliance. A hallmark of Heifer’s work in Armenia is its YES! youth clubs, one of which I had a chance to visit while I was there.

It was raining as we drove from the capital city, Yerevan, to a small community near Lake Sevan, about 45 minutes north. As we entered the school, the excited shouts of students echoed down the concrete hallways of the Soviet-era building. They had been waiting for us for almost two hours, but neither the weather nor the long wait had done anything to dampen their enthusiasm.

YES! youth club members have the opportunity to participate in several “directions,” including agriculture, environment health and civic education. The students of the agriculture and environment directions entertained us with skits and songs about healthy cows, while the civic education direction had a lively debate about gender equity in Armenia. Afterwards we had a chance to see the intricately designed, hand-written books highlighting the group’s activities. You could see the pride in the student’s eyes as they described all they have accomplished over the past years with Heifer’s involvement.

Artur Melkonyan, one of the active members of the club, said it best: “I have grown up with Heifer in this school and I cannot imagine Heifer not being a part of my life. I will go on to do great things … because of my involvement in the club.”

Read more about Heifer Armenia’s YES! Youth Clubs in the latest issue of World Ark magazine.

Summer Vacation Vocation

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Photo from Flickr/mamichan. Creative Commons.
The most recent NYTimes magazine had a piece about Alexandra Reau, a Michigan teen who turned her family’s backyard into a mini-farm:
“Now in its second season, her Garden to Go C.S.A. (community-supported agriculture) grows for 14 members, who pay $100 to $175 for two months of just-picked vegetables and herbs. While her peers are hanging out at Molly’s Mystic Freeze and working out the moves to that Miley Cyrus video, she’s flicking potato-beetle larvae off of leaves in her V-neck T-shirt and denim capris, a barrette keeping her hair out of her demurely made-up eyes. Who says the face of American farming is a 57-year-old man with a John Deere cap?”

Should we promote projects like this as an alternative to the typical teen summer job at the mall? What other ideas do you have for a productive summer?