What Will We Do?

All of Heifer's Study Tours let participants observe Heifer's model of sustainable development in action. Tours visit the small-scale livestock projects that allow rural families to improves their nutrition and make a living while protecting the environment. While projects vary widely, visitors might, for example, see a bio-gas unit generating power from manure in China, meet the alpacas that help farmers subsist in the fragile high altitudes of Ecuador, or see families harvest honey from their bee colonies in Poland. Some tours will also focus on specific issues like gender equity, agroecology, HIV/AIDS, animal well-being, microenterprise and education.

Every place you will visit on a Heifer Study Tour has a success story - or a dozen, or a hundred. You will see firsthand how project partners have improved their own lives - their nutrition, their living conditions, their futures.

On a Study Tour, you are a respresentative of Heifer International - and your presence honors those who work hard to make their lives and their communities better.

Passing on the Gift

You may witness a "passing on the gift" ceremony, the special event when one family passes on their animal's offspring to another. This is one of the cornerstones of Heifer's development model. All of Heifer's project partners also become donors by passing on offspring of their animals and sharing their training. We ask that you, too, pass on the gift by sharing your experiences with individuals and organizations upon your return home. 

Participant Perspectives

I have always thought of Heifer as an organization that gifts livestock to poor and needy families. This tour has made me realize that it is so much more than just animals. All the training that goes into making the project participants self sustainable is astounding. There are so many challenges that we from the western world cannot even understand. But despite of all this, it works. People are benefiting from Heifer. I could see it clearly in the projects I visited. As a teacher and a mother I am touched by the changes the capacity building trainings have brought in the lives of so many families.
- Elizabeth Woolsey, Heifer Supporter, France
Nepal 2009 Study Tour participant.

What if people of means would forgo just one expensive travel company tour or cruise substituting it for a Heifer Study Tour? This last question is the only one I can answer for sure. Their lives would never be the same.
- Elain Edge
Uganda/Rwanda 2006 Study Tour participant and Heifer International volunteer.

Sitting on a wooden bench in the middle of the jungle eating fresh-cut sugar cane with people who lived in mud-floored houses was a real luxury, and worth every step I'd taken climbing a rocky, steep hill. The genuine graciousness and generosity of people who had so little made me feel grateful to be there, and made the difficulty of getting there unimportant.
- Mary Ann Brittain
Mary Ann Britain, of Raleigh, North Carolina, works for the NC Museum of Natural Sciences, which has a special educational collaboration with Heifer International.

Before I journeyed to Cameroon, I was aware of the poverty much of our world is in; however, I was at a loss to understand how one person could make a difference. After meeting the Heifer staff and visiting with the farmers, I was filled with hope for the future of our world. I now incorporate my experiences in lesson plans for my second grade students, so that the next generation will be aware at a young age that they can make a difference.
- Leslie Black
Leslie Black teaches second grade in Los Angeles, California.

I am continually amazed at how the experiences of our trip together have been brought to my consciousness again and again, and have often had a profound impact on my thinking and my 'doing'.
- Craig Herb