“Turn lives of hunger and poverty into self-reliance and hope.”
On a recent trip to Arkansas, my family visited Heifer Village, an amazing global education facility that has hands-on exhibits appropriate for all ages. It’s part of the Heifer International Campus in downtown Little Rock.
If you aren’t familiar with Heifer International, it was started by a man named Dan West in 1944 after he had served as a relief worker handing out rations of milk to hungry children during the Spanish Civil War. It was here that he came up with the phrase “not a cup, but a cow.”
His idea: give families a source of food (a heifer) instead of a temporary source of relief (a cup of milk). Today, you can purchase all sorts of animals as charitable gifts: goats, chicks, sheep, water buffalo, and bees, to name a few. In doing so, you can help families around the world become self-reliant.
We were able to take a little of our experience at Heifer Village home with us in the form of a book titled “Beatrice’s Goat.” The book is based on the true story of a 9-year-old girl living in Uganda whose family receives a goat from Heifer International and how this gift changes her life. The goat provides milk for nourishment and income for the family, which in turn, allows Beatrice to afford school. My daughter loves the book for the story and beautiful illustrations. I love it because it helps her see in a concrete way how a gift of one animal can change a family…and a village.
- Malinda Moseley
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