Peace and Prosperity in Thailand
Nabo Jaue’s family moved to Pha Tai Mai more than 25 years ago with only what they could carry. They struggled terribly to start over. The land was poor and difficult to farm, and they didn’t even own it themselves — it belonged to the Thai government. Before they became heifer partners, Nabo and her husband, Jaha, earned less than $60 a year, not enough to feed their two children. “We were relying on the forest to find food,” Nabo says.
Today, they are able to grow enough food to eat. By selling vegetables and the offspring of their animals, they have increased their income 700 percent! That’s allowed them to improve their diet and buy electricity for their home.
Nabo and Jaha have also invested some of their income into small businesses, like Nabo’s micro-enterprise weaving, selling purses and rice milling.
With your help, this family has not only rebuilt — they are more successful and self-reliant than ever before!
Peace for the Earth in Ecuador
When Blanca Morocho and her husband, Segundo Conlago Guzman, moved back to Blanca’s village in the mountains of Ecuador after 30 years in the bustling city of Quito, they remembered very little about farming. They were told they had to use a toxic spray on their fields. But their farm continued to struggle, and their income barely covered the costs of the chemicals.
That’s why Segundo decided to look into a new Heifer International project that was encouraging families in his village to switch to organic farming.
Today, Segundo and Blanca are thriving farmers. Their fields spill over with giant, delicious vegetables and fruits. and they have increased their income many times over by selling their organic produce for a higher price at the market. “We have plenty to eat,” Segundo says now. “We are healthier.”
Many people — including Segundo’s sons — were skeptical of organic farming at first. But now they are seeing the incredible transformation of his farm and they too are putting down the chemicals and trying their hand at organic farming.
“We have been an example to others,” Segundo says. “Usually you have to be young to try something new. We are setting a good example for our grandchildren.”
Peace of mind in Kenya
Stephen and Phoebe Onyango live in an impoverished region of Western Kenya. Between them they used to earn less than $2 a day, not enough to afford the food their four children needed. When their eldest daughter, Baryl, reached her first birthday, she weighed just 11 pounds — less than half the average weight for a child that age. Her siblings were malnourished, too.
Every day Stephen and Phoebe worried about malnutrition and malaria — until the day they received three dairy goats thanks to caring friends like you!
The goats have provided fresh milk for the children to drink, manure that has brought their vegetable gardens to life and a sustainable source of income. Baryl and the other children are healthy and well-fed, they have mosquito nets to protect them from malaria and Stephen and Phoebe can now afford to send them to school.
Phoebe is profoundly grateful to caring Heifer supporters like you for the gift her family received. “I am very thankful for what they did for my life,” she says. “May God bless them so that they can help others.”
Phoebe and Stephen no longer have to worry about their children’s health. For these hardworking parents, your gifts have helped provide the peace they needed — peace of mind.
Peace from homelessness and discrimination in Poland
In poor, rural communities in Poland, The Help Your Neighbor Association (Mar-Kot) is empowering homeless, disabled and marginalized people to become self-reliant and self-secure through farming.
Since 2005, Heifer has worked with Mar-Kot to create an extraordinary community at the Agro-School of Life in Miączyn to help people lead a life of dignity.
Heifer provided Janusz Bółkowski, the manager of the agro-School of Life, with more than 50 pigs and sows, a boar, training and farming equipment, including a used tractor. Everyone who lives at Miączyn participates in the farm work.
A farm that had only one pig before this Heifer International project now has 53 pigs, 20 ducks, over 200 chickens and more than 300 geese. Today, 50 formerly homeless and disabled men, women and children live at Miączyn, and during the winter they take in more people in need. The community provides these resilient, resourceful people with a place to stay and the opportunity to acquire skills and a sense of self-worth.
The Agro-School of Life shows how your compassionate support for Heifer is helping people escape poverty and build strong, self-sustaining, peaceful communities.
War and Peace in Uganda
Lawac Florence and her husband, Otema Fred, met in a displaced persons camp in the Ugandan village of Coo Pe. Coo Pe means “No Men,” which is what women would tell the rebels who came to the village. all the men had already been killed or forced to fight in Uganda’s bloody civil war.
Florence and Fred lived in the camp for years, repeatedly losing all their possessions in rebel raids. When they finally risked returning home, they found their huts burned to the ground and their fields littered with landmines and bodies.
In a war-ravaged country like Uganda, people’s hardships don’t end when the fighting stops. Florence and Fred lost everything ... their family and friends ... their homes ... their livelihoods ... and they needed an opportunity to start over.
Until a tentative ceasefire was brokered in 2008, Ugandan families were torn apart by more than 20 years of civil war. The war which became infamous for the use of child soldiers by the Lord’s Resistance army (LRA) and its brutality.
Before the war, Coo Pe was a small, quiet village of just a couple thousand people. But during the war, nearly 60,000 people crowded into the village for protection.
Florence was only seven years old when rebels killed her father. When she lost her mother to cancer, she went to live with her uncle. But he was also killed by the LRA. So Florence went to live in the refugee camp in Coo Pe. With no one to pay her school fees, she ended her education at age 12.
Fred was 12 when his family moved to the Coo Pe camp. The rebels had raided his village and burned his family’s house. One day the LRA murdered some of his family and Fred was lucky to survive being shot in the leg and back. His older brother was abducted and forced to fight.
But life in the camp wasn’t any easier. Coo Pe was rife with diseases like cholera and malaria. The LRA routinely terrorized the camp, stealing away thousands of young boys. And there just wasn’t enough food to go around. Florence and Fred ate only once a day, and then just beans and maize.
Despite the hardships, Florence and Fred fell in love and started a family. They now have three children — a daughter, Winnie, and two sons, Phillip and Simple.
When the LRA and the government began peace talks, Florence and Fred were among the first to risk leaving the camp. The war wasn’t over, but Fred felt they had no choice. They needed to feed their children.
So, with nothing but each other, they moved back to Fred’s parents’ farm. And they found a nightmare waiting for them. The huts had been burned and the land was overgrown and strewn with the bodies and bones of the dead. They had to clear landmines before they could begin planting.
Because Fred had been forced to move to the camp as a young boy, he didn’t know much about farming and struggled to provide for his family. Food was scarce, and school fees and medical bills were more than they could afford.
“They would fall sick quite often,” he says of his children. “Even buying them clothing was difficult. If you had visited before you would have seen the children dressed in rags and crying for food.”
Fred and Florence — like so many Ugandans — were desperate to put the violence and fear behind them, but they needed an opportunity to build hope and self- reliance ... the fertile soil in which prosperity and peace can grow.
For more than 68 years, millions of people around the world have been given opportunities in the form of animals and training from Heifer International.
In 2010, Fred and Florence joined them. Thanks to kindhearted friends like you, they received a dairy cow from Heifer — and the spark they needed!
They decided to name the cow Flora. Since her arrival, Flora has provided this hopeful family with two bull calves and lots of milk. “Before my children didn’t even know what milk looked like,” Florence says. “This cow has made my family happy.”
They also received extensive training in livestock management, environmental protection, vegetable gardening, gender equity and HIV awareness.
Before this project, Fred and Florence owned no animals. now they have 31 cows, bulls, goats and chickens! and all those animals produce lots of manure, which helps them grow a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. now they can feed their children three healthy, balanced meals every day. They no longer have to fear malnutrition.
The biggest impact of this project has been the dramatic increase in their income. Before, Fred earned just $1 from a full day of clearing land, but often couldn’t find work.
Now, “Thanks to Heifer, we earn $240 per month from milk sales,” he says proudly. “Imagine a poorly educated man like me earning that much per month!”
Fred is overjoyed at the transformation his family has made. He and Florence have used this new income to send their three children to better schools, and have started a joint savings account to pay for them to go to college. They have built a better home and continue to expand their farm.
Fred is also leaving the brutality of the LRA behind him. “I’m now trying to forget the past. The worries we had and the pain we felt is going. The bitterness is gone.”
Fred and Florence are so thankful for the gifts caring supporters of heifer international like you have given them. “I want to say thank you to Heifer because your support has really helped me,” Fred says.
He is also thankful for the opportunity he has been given to help another poor family in Coo Pe by Passing on the Gift. “We are proud that we are no longer beggars of food and basic requirements, but we are donors within our community.”
But he wants you to know that his country has far to go to heal its wounds, and that there are so many more families that need your help.
“The people who were affected by the war are too many,” he says. “If there was more support, then more people could be helped out of this dire situation.”
