Starting at six months, a good hen can lay up to 200 eggs a year—a reliable source of protein for those children who otherwise would live mostly on starches. Extra eggs can be sold to pay for school, clothes and medicine.

In the vegetable garden, chickens peck at bugs and weeds, scratch up the soil and enrich it with droppings—so they improve diets and crops.

The gift of a flock of chicks helps families from Cameroon to the Caribbean.