Heifer Supports One Campaign
 Heifer International has joined the ONE Campaign to rally Americans for a worldwide initiative “to make poverty history.” It asks that Americans unite to lobby the U.S. government for an additional one percent of the U.S. budget to be used to provide basic needs such as health, education, clean water, and food to those living in the world’s poorest countries. Such a commitment would transform the futures and hopes of an entire generation. We urge all to support the One Campaign's efforts. More about Heifer’s involvement.
For in-depth coverage of the G8 summit and related issue and a final wrap-up of the outcome from a news organization covering the summit as both a world-wide and local story check out the Guardian Unlimited's Special Reports.
Pictured at Right: Meagan Lewis, Heifer's mid-atlantic regional director, holds Bellringer the Goat at the Live 8 Philadelphia concert.
Twenty years ago, through Live Aid and “We are the World,” the music industry helped open the eyes of a generation to the harsh realities of life in Africa. On July 2, a new series of Live 8 concerts around the world called on a new generation to revive the effort to help Africa and “Make poverty history.”
On the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum, actor Will Smith led off a parade of performers in a day-long concert. Between acts, the crowd, estimated by the New York Times to be over 1,000,000 people, watched broadcasts of the London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Tokyo, Toronto and Johannesburg concerts on giant television screens stationed down the Parkway.
Heifer played an active role in the concert. As a member of the ONE Campaign, Heifer International sent four delegates to Philadelphia. The night before the concert, Megan Lewis, mid-Atlantic regional director for Heifer, hosted a gathering of more than 100 delegates from many charitable organizations at the Friends Center in downtown Philadelphia. The next day Heifer’s delegation attended a ONE rally behind the Philadelphia Art Museum where Christian rock group Jars of Clay, actor Chris Tucker, and author Rick Warren, writer of the best-selling The Purpose-Drive Life encouraged ONE to push leaders at
the G-8 Summit, July 6-8 in Scotland, to increase aid to Africa.
Heifer staffed a booth on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway during the concert to educate concert-goers about solutions to hunger and poverty. Umaru Sule, assistant director of the mid-Atlantic office, brought two gray and white Toggenburg goats to the concert and was interviewed by several media outlets.
Sule told his story of surviving a natural disaster in his native Cameroon when a lake near his home produced a poisonous cloud of carbon-dioxide gas, killing more than a thousand people and most of his village’s livestock. Heifer helped the village recover. Sule got an education and today works for Heifer in Philadelphia.
At the end of the day, singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan, who had just performed for the crowd, posed for a photo with one of Heifer’s goats to promote Heifer’s work and its message of hope for ending hunger and poverty.
Check back soon to see the photos.
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