Around the Web: Tasty Honey, Charitable Reading, Rebuilding Haiti

Every Sunday we highlight some of the people who are funding our work creatively or helping us spread the word of our mission online. If you spot Heifer International while you’re surfing the web or know of a fun or creative fundraising effort, please share it with us here in the comments.

Photo credit: Lakewood School/West of the I

Six Lakewood School third-graders raised money for Heifer through reading. The news article explains the effort well: "With Read to Feed, students enlist sponsors who pledge donations—a dime, a quarter, a dollar a book, any amount, really. Then they read, and as they finish more books, the pledges grow higher until at the end of the program, the children gather the pledges, pool their money and donate the total collected to Heifer to use to help families build sustainable lives and to become self-reliant." At Lakewood School, students raised $470, enough to purchase a water buffalo, a goat, a trio of rabbits, a flock of ducks, and a flock of chicks.

Photo credit: http://lagringasblogicito.blogspot.com/2013/03/good-honduran-honey.html

La Gringa wrote a blog post about some really tasty honey she used to sweeten her homemade yogurt. What's extra special to us about this honey is that it comes from a co-op participating in a Heifer project, the Coapihl cooperative in Honduras.

First Chicago Insurance Company, Inc., through its program to donate one dollar for every new policy issued during 2012, donated close to $17,000 to six charities, including Heifer International. “Even during these challenging economic times, First Chicago Insurance Company, Inc. believes that it is important to honor our corporate responsibility by financially supporting a worthy cause,” stated John Gettemans, the company's president.

For the second year, Cooperstown Central School’s seventh-graders raised $250 to donate to Heifer International. The money is being matched by local veterinarian Michael Powers, so they are buying a heifer for a family in need. Powers addressed the students, "When you graduate, class of 2018, you will know that this gift is still helping people."

Connecticut's Bethel United Methodist Church is raising money for Heifer International’s REACH project: Rural Entrepreneurs for Agricultural Cooperation in Haiti, which connects farming families, aid organizations, producers, municipalities, public-private sector partnerships and others to rehabilitate and strengthen the crop- and livestock-based livelihoods in Haiti destroyed by natural disasters. During April and May 2013, BUMC seeks to raise at least $2,000 for REACH.

Photo credit: St. Louis Today

For the 10th year in a row, Dechesne High School students donate an ark's worth of animals in a Lenten fundraiser. "In Lent the idea of fasting and almsgiving is at the core of what the church believes and teaches. (Heifer Project) is just a great way, we think, for students to experience for the first time, in a really cushioned way within the school community, what that spirit of giving is like," said Alicia Bungum, Duchesne's campus minister.