Project Updates

Heifer International is working in Cambodia to improve the quality of life on many fronts. Heifer is empowering women to enable them to escape domestic violence and to become leaders in their community. Participants have increased their families’ incomes and improved their living conditions.
Heifer is actively involved in Tibet to help impoverished households become self-sufficient and preserve their culture. In addition to increasing family income by an average of 25 percent, community members have built stronger relationships. The result is a more peaceful neighborhood in which neighbors seek to help one another.
Heifer is assisting more than 4,000 people in 20 villages in the Sichuan region of China who were affected by the 2008 magnitude 8.0 earthquake. Heifer has developed a children’s writing and painting competition through which children of participant families show how Heifer has impacted their lives. The competition encourages these children to express themselves, to explore their own potential and to realize their dreams.
Indigenous Q´eqchies people who live near the ridge of the Cahabon River watershed in Alta Verapaz department of Guatemala are underemployed, have few labor alternatives, are plagued by illiteracy and have no access to potable water, draining systems and electricity. Heifer’s work here is promoting activities to provide income and conserve the area’s natural resources.
Heifer International remains committed to its long-term rehabilitation work in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. Our goal is to rehabilitate rural livelihoods and foster sustainable food and income security for 12,000 families by the end of 2013. Heifer is working to make farming ecologically sound and economically profitable in Haiti.
Before the Godoy-Rivas family received their cow from Heifer, the children reported headaches from weakness and a lack of vitamins. Since the family has been using the milk from their cow, Sardina, their headaches have diminished and their grades have improved.
The diet of José Santos Vásquez Hernández’s family has improved dramatically as a result of the gift of 20 hens and a rooster from Heifer International. They are just one of 6,000 families who are being assisted in three Heifer projects in Honduras involving animal placement, agroecological farming, microenterprise and more.
Heifer has placed goats with families in eastern Rajasthan, and women are being trained to become community leaders. Gopali Devi, her husband, and their three children are one such family. They received three goats and vegetable seeds to start a kitchen garden. Through self-help groups, Gopali has become a leader in her community.
Project participant Sayra Devi lives with her husband and their 10 children in a thatched house of two rooms and a kitchen. Her husband farms and earns a meager income as a laborer, along with their two oldest sons. Sayra is illiterate. She always stayed home, always wore veils and had no exposure to the outside world before her involvement with Heifer.
The Children’s Orphanage house and Gaujiena’s specialized boarding school have around 145 children between the ages of two and 18. The children were taken from their parents for reasons such as alcohol abuse, neglect and domestic violence. Stories about the children’s behavior have created fear among the villagers, so the orphanage and school are socially isolated. Heifer is working in this Latvia community to change that through joint trainings and different activities.

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