In the News

When it comes to birthdays, people wish for all kinds of things — clothes, cars, gift cards. Singer Cody Belew’s birthday wish, though, is helping families live a life of self-reliance and poverty.

Summer will be here before you know it. When the schools close that means summer reading lists. Heifer International, a charity dedicated to ending hunger and poverty, has a unique program that is perfect for summer called Read to Feed.

You may best know the guinea pig as a nervous little pet that lives in a cage and eats alfalfa pellets. Now, the rodents are increasingly showing up on plates in the United States. The Little Rock-based humanitarian organization Heifer International, which assists communities in enhancing their economies and streamlining local food production, is also promoting guinea pig husbandry in Peru, Ecuador and Guatemala.

As part of a multimedia effort based on Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s best-selling book ‘Half the Sky,’ the Half the Sky Movement launched a Facebook game today to turn millions of Facebook players’ gameplay into real-world activism and micro-donations.

What do you, the most unabashedly selfish and inconsiderate member of your friend group, buy this holiday season for that one person in your life whose giving is not restricted by our Gregorian calendar? To defeat the charitable people in the world, we must first understand the charitable people in the world, and the following list of possible gifts is a pretty good place to start.

Global hunger and poverty organization Heifer International released the first non-profit tablet magazine app Thursday, launching a digital edition of its quarterly publication World Ark. The app is available for free for in the App store for iPads and Google Play for Android tablets.

Dreidels, latkes and menorahs come to mind when one thinks of Chanukah, but Heifer International also wants people to consider goats, vegetable seeds and chicks this time of year.

With Heifer International, you can give a family you don’t know the ultimate gift: a livelihood. For a donation of $10 and up, you provide an animal (everything from chickens to water buffalo) that the family can use to produce milk or eggs, make cheese or other products, or fertilize gardens, and then help others.

Little Rock-based Heifer International is expanding into the South Asia nation of Bangladesh.

One of the questions I’m often asked as CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is what issues we invest in and why. To answer, it helps to understand a little about the foundation’s history.