TangleBones

I agree. Every year your mother and a few other women coor­di­nate the giving of sim­i­lar gifts in dif­fer­ent parts of the world. Two years ago they gave sev­eral milk goats to fam­i­lies in Tan­za­nia. Last year they gave a cow to a family in SE Asia. Get­ting ready to give a few pigs very soon. The live­stock make a tremen­dous dif­fer­ence, a large improve­ment in family health and well-​being. They use an orga­ni­za­tion called The Heif­fer Project. A friend of ours just got back from Tan­za­nia. She had the oppor­tu­nity to meet the Heif­fer Project man­ager in the area she vis­ited. She gave the HP glow­ing reviews after talk­ing to the staff and sev­eral fam­i­lies that had ben­e­fited from HP gifts.

The ECC has had a sim­i­lar idea in process for 20 years. They do pig bank­ing in Laos and Thai­land. Poor fam­i­lies are given a pig with the require­ment that they return two piglets when the sow gives birth. Since they often have any­where from a dozen to 18 piglets this is not a real sac­ri­fice for them and it dou­bles the capac­ity of the pig bank to help others.

A group here bought a sewing machine and sent it to a woman in Angola. They had pre­vi­ously paid for her to attend tai­lor­ing classes. Now she is able to sup­port her family.

There are many heart­warm­ing sto­ries like these but they seldom get much public expo­sure.

Strangely, it was the Heifer Project’s “give a water buffalo” gift cer­tifi­cate, whose fine print indi­cates that the water buf­falo is merely sym­bolic, that started this par­tic­u­lar project.

Yeah. But the fact is that real per­sons, needy per­sons, receive real live­stock through HP. No, there is no one to one con­nec­tion between a person’s gift and a par­tic­u­lar animal, no family iden­ti­fied ahead of time as the one that will receive the animal that one donor pays for. But it gets the job done and does it well. HP is an out­side audited char­ity that pro­vides more bang per buck than the Red Cross. And even though it is a Chris­t­ian char­ity it gives ani­mals equally to needy people of any, all, or no reli­gion.