17 January 2007 ~ 3 Comments

Take 8 minutes out of your day

…and watch 4 generations right now. It’s a simple story, but it’s beautiful and inspiring.

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3 Responses to “Take 8 minutes out of your day”

  1. skank 18 January 2007 at 3:07 pm Permalink
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    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.

  2. Jemaleddin 18 January 2007 at 5:00 pm Permalink
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    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.

  3. skank 18 January 2007 at 9:32 pm Permalink
    Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.1 Windows XP

    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.