Heifer International
Heifer International is a non-profit charitable organization based in Little Rock, Arkansas, dedicated to relieving global hunger and poverty. American farmer Dan West, its founder, was serving as a Church of the Brethren relief worker in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and became frustrated that he was forced to decide how to allocate a very limited amount of food aid (see rationing, triage). Upon his return to the United States, he founded Heifers for Relief, an organization dedicated to providing permanent freedom from hunger by giving families livestock and training so that they "could be spared the indignity of depending on others to feed their children." He based it on the phrase "If you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, if you teach him to fish, he'll eat for life", and made the slogan "not a cup, but a cow". The first group of 17 heifers—young cows who have not given birth—was shipped from York, Pennsylvania, to Puerto Rico in 1944. Each heifer serves as a continual source of milk and a breeder of other cattle, and each family who receives one agrees to donate the female offspring to another family. In this fashion, a single gift can multiply far beyond the original investment. Today the organization is known as Heifer International and gives gifts of sheep, rabbits, honeybees, pigs, llamas, water buffalo, chicks, ducks, goats, geese, and trees as well as heifers. Individuals can purchase "shares" of a gift or pay for an entire gift to be sent to a family in Ecuador, Zambia, Nepal, the United States, Burkina Faso, the Philippines, and elsewhere. Each gift perpetuates Heifer's interest in agroecology and sustainability. Heifer is involved in several other progressive global initiatives, spanning dozens of countries. The organization's current president and chief executive officer is Jo Luck, an alumna of Hendrix College. Heifer's head photographer
is Darcy Kiefel.
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