I’m watching an X-Files marathon on cable, and this starving kid commercial airs frequently. Susan Sarandon tells us we can send $20 a month so these starving children can get fed. She says “We will send cows and goats so they can have all the milk they need.”
Am I the only one who thought she meant the cows and goats would be their food? I was wondering how starving kids would be able to slaughter livestock for food. Would they send butchers with the cows and goats? I don’t suppose that part of Africa has freezers, so maybe the butchers are grilling newly fresh steaks for the poorly fed.
Then I realized she was talking about milking the cows and goats. That’s still kind of a task for starving children, so maybe they all live in farms and already know how to do it. Must be dirt farms if they’re starving.
I haven’t seen the commercial but it’s probably for the Heifer Foundation:
Heifer is founded on the old proverb about teaching a man to fish. It’s easier just to give people food but that doesn’t solve the problem. Instead Heifer works with families to create self sustaining farms and industries. So say there’s a family in a place where goats thrive (they give animals sourced locally, for the most part, with outside animals to supplement the breeding stock). Heifer works with the family to build an animal shelter and teach them about modern animal husbandry, including gardening with the manure. Then they give the family a pregnant female goat. Once the kid is born, the family can use extra milk to drink or make cheese with. The next year, Heifer provides a healthy ram for breeding and the family can start building their own flock of goats. They could eat the goats, and families who get pigs or chickens might eat some of the offspring, but it’s far more useful to try to build up a healthy flock and create a cheese and dairy farm. Heifer helps the family market or sell the products from animals and keeps providing breeding assistance. As part of the program, the initial family has to pass on one of their female kids back to the Heifer people so that they can help a second family and so on.
So it’s not really about giving animals to eat but as part of creating a sustainable farm and industry based on the animal by-products.
They won’t help currently starving people, but they can help to keep people from getting so bad off that they kill their livestock for food.
Look over the website, its legit. At least, I think it is. I buy a flock of geese once a month. Or, I think I do. I hope its not a scam. I donate because of the educational part. Besides geese are evil beasts, I don’t care if some of them get eaten. I do hope that they don’t eat all of them so they can get eggs and more geese.
Thanks. I really did think they were legit, but you never know.
We bought my mother-in-law a goat for Christmas. She loved it, thought it was the best idea ever. Seriously, what can you buy for someone who has everything but a new creative idea for charity?
Thankfully, they send me emails reminding me to buy more geese. I haven’t found an auto pay option yet, but I keep getting distracted when looking at the webpage.
Geese and goats eat just about anything. Seriously, I knew someone who rented some goats for cleaning up some property and they ate their camper shell.
Its not about being able to buy pet food, its about teaching people how to use their resources properly and then sharing. Eggs and milk, meat and cheese will happen.
Africans eat PLENTY of beef and goat. In poor areas, this wouldn’t be a daily thing. But a town might slaughter a cow for sale on market day, and goats are common special-occasion food. And grilled meat is a common street food treat.
Cattle are generally slaughtered by professional butchers. Slaughtering a goat is easy enough to do at home. With areas I am familiar with, cow meat is usually sold on at the market, while leftover goat meat is preserved. Meat can be deep fried and preserved in oil, which lasts up to a week or so (and is delicious). Meat can also be dried into various tasty jerkeys. And lots is shared, with the expectation that your neighbors will share when they prepare a goat. Hides are tanned using low tech methods (it’s not uncommon to see goat hides curing on the side of the road) and used for various useful purposes.
But more importantly than food, animals act as a savings account in places where banks aren’t really a thing. They provide ongoing returns in the form of milk and dung (which is used for fuel, flooring, and fertilizer) and can be sold in real emergencies. In a lot of places, cattle play and important social role, and play in heavily in dowries and things of that nature.
Goats graze around town. Cows are grazed in the bush, often with young boys minding them. Cows can also be left with professional cow herders, who are able to trek to more distant (and more bountiful) pastures.
I first heard of this after my dad died, and a friend of mine donated chickens in his name. :p. He would have appreciated that.
This year for Christmas, my son wanted to make a donation in lieu of one of his presents. My bro and SIL got him a share of a cow. :). (And another smaller presnet for himself, LOL).
I think the program is appealing because it’s so relateable. I also really like organizations that focus on things that will help a family or community on an ongoing basis and help them build wealth. sven - what do you know about Charity Water? I contribute to them sometimes.
It’s not that the people in question are starving, it’s that they are malnourished and poor. For a lot of different reasons, many of the family farms in Africa, Asia, and South America are poorly managed. Heifer doesn’t just provide an animal that gives milk, they train the people on how to use the animal. So, manure is composted and worked back into the soil, making it more fertile. Trees are allowed to grow, making windbreaks and providing firewood. The animals almost always produce more milk than the family itself needs, so the wife sells the extra milk and uses the money for more food, new clothes, even school fees for her children.
And when the cow or goat is old enough to be bred, the family donates one of the offspring to a neighbor who is being trained by Heifer, and in doing so, builds wealth for the entire community.
I don’t know a ton about individual charities. Many of them are extremely effective. Others are misguided. It’s really hard to tell which is which unless you have some inside knowledge. In general, is focus on small organizations that are either not faith based or run by a faith with a long history of public service (some of the random faith based organizations are based more on what people would like to work than reality) and on people who really know a particular geographic area really well.
OK, self-sustaining initiatives make more sense. But the commercial went for the heart-string tugging approach, showing starving children with empty cups. If they had included scenes of HF reps showing natives how to breed and maintain livestock, I would have gotten a better picture.
Charities are kind of hamstrung here. The heart-string crap works, which translates into more money for programs and better outcomes for their beneficiaries. If they show the sensible side of what they do (which is usually about community initiatives rather than singling out individual families), they get fewer donations and do less good.
A fun fact is that the single image that gets the most donations is a girl holding a duck. Take a look at charity literature one day and you’ll see lots of kids and animals, some women, and basically no men. That’s what works.
Just an aside, I met this woman on a flight around Christmas of 2010. She was a local administrator for Worldvision. I liked the way the did micro-loans to small businesses in developing countries (they train them, monitor them, put up specific needs on the website and yuo fund the thing you’re interested in. Cool. I started doing this every Christmas.
About 2012, I tried to do my normal giving, and I got into a goat loop. Every time I tried to give in my normal way, I was sent to a new site that asked me if I wanted to buy some villiage a goat. No! I don’t want to buy a goat, I want to actually give MORE MONEY than the goat costs, but I want to do it the way I want to! Nope, buy a goat. Finally, I got so frustrated that I sent an e-mail to the support staff telling them my charitable contribution would go to someone else this year that WASN’T SELLING GOATS!
I did get a very nice apology, asking me to reconsider, but I had already given the money to another local charity. I tried Worldvision again last year and they were not as goat-centric, so I’m back to them again.