Every time you buy a house through Leonard Leonard & Associates
we send an animal to a family in need through
Heifer International

Finding Global Solutions
Heifer has learned over the years that a holistic approach is necessary in order to build sustainable communities. So we’ve developed a set of global initiatives – areas of emphasis that must be addressed if we’re to meet our mission of ending world hunger and poverty and caring for the earth.

Agroecology
In a world where land is overused, community members need to learn how to protect and rejuvenate their land, water and other natural resources. Heifer helps by teaching environmentally sound agricultural techniques.

Animal Well-Being
Before any Heifer animal is passed along to a project partner, Heifer trains the new recipient in animal management, using our strictly enforced. Animal Welfare Guidelines

Gender Equity
In Heifer's view, gender equity is a social justice and human rights issue that directly leads to ending hunger and poverty. That's why our participants are equal partners in sustainable development projects.

HIV-AIDS
Today, we as a world community, confront AIDS, a virus that in the past 25 years has either infected or killed over 64 million people. It is not only a health issue, as it fractures every sector of society, for Heifer, it is a prominent concern in the arena of sustainable development. This is why Heifer is incorporating HIV/AIDS education in our community training groups.

Microenterprise
Heifer provides both "no-interest living loans" in the form of livestock, as well as small monetary loans to help people start and expand businesses that yield big benefits for families.

Urban Agriculture
Heifer is reconnecting city-dwellers with their food sources, building strong alliances and instilling an entrepreneurial spirit among adults and youth through our Urban Agriculture projects.

Young People's Initiative
Heifer weaves youth-focused programs through all our project work and emphasizes young people's needs.

Gifts

Give a healthy heifer that offers families four gallons of milk per day!

Better still, your gift multiplies, as the first female calf from your cow is passed on to another family in need — then they also agree to pass on an animal of equal value, and so on. Now that's quite a gift. A good dairy cow can produce four gallons of milk per day — enough for a family to drink and share with neighbors, and still have enough left over to sell.

The protein in milk can transform sick, malnourished children into healthy boys and girls. The sale of surplus milk earns money for school fees, medicine, clothing and home improvements.

And because a healthy cow can have a calf every year, your gift of a heifer could eventually help an entire community move from poverty to self-reliance. And that's a present that's impossible to top!

Chicks: A Good Choice

Chickens are a real value. Starting at six months, they can lay up to 200 eggs a year — a reliable source of protein for children who otherwise subsist mostly on starches. Extra eggs can be sold to pay for school, clothes and medicine. And in the vegetable garden, chickens peck at bugs and weeds, scratch up the soil and enrich it with droppings.

Shear Joy

Entire communities depend on wool and meat from sheep. That's why a gift of a sheep can bring "shear" joy to a family in need!

You can help many hungry families through a gift of a high-quality breed of this hardy animal. Struggling families use sheep's wool to make clothes, or sell it for extra income.

Sheep often give birth to twins or triplets and can graze even the hilliest, rockiest pastures unsuitable to other livestock. Some Heifer families use managed grazing techniques or keep their sheep in zero-grazing pens, to protect the environment and permit efficient collection of manure for fertilizer that improves soil and pasture land.

Wool Works Wonders. Warm in winter, cool in summer, waterproof and durable — wool is a valuable product that struggling families can use for clothing or sell for extra income.

Goats are Good for Families

Goat's milk is the only milk known to half the world's people, but 80 percent of mothers and children in rural areas do not have any type of milk or milk products. The gift of a dairy goat is a lasting, meaningful way to help a struggling family on the other side of the world.

Goats can thrive in extreme climates and on poor, dry land by eating grass and leaves. A dairy goat can supply a family with up to several quarts of nutritious milk a day — a ton of milk a year.

Extra milk can be sold or used to make cheese, butter or yogurt. Families use goat manure to fertilize gardens. And because goats often have two or three kids a year, Heifer partners can start small dairies that pay for food, health care and education.

It's no wonder the gentle nanny goat is often called the "foster mother to the human race!"

Pigs Provide for Families

To help hungry, undernourished families put protein back in their diets at little cost, Heifer teaches farmers how to raise healthy pigs in countries where waste products are the only available feed. In Honduras, pigs eat rejected bananas, and in the Dominican Republic, they thrive on damaged yams. Using resources once considered worthless, impoverished families worldwide supply themselves with the protein and income they need to improve their lives. No wonder families smile over their Heifer pigs.

Light Up a Life with Llamas

When resources are scarce, it's important that livestock don't use up land reserved for people. At home in rough, mountainous areas of Latin America, llamas are a blessing to families with limited pasture land, and they play a pivotal role in the cultural life of indigenous communities on the high plains of Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru.

Women weave their llamas' fleece into warm clothing to wear or sell. They load them up with goods for market and trek with them across rugged slopes at high altitudes. As they travel, llamas' padded feet don't damage the fragile terrain and their selective browsing doesn't destroy sparse vegetation.

Llamas and their kin, the alpaca, provide Heifer families with invaluable sources of transportation, income and wool, which is prized for making blankets, ponchos, carpet and rope.

Llamas are remarkably disease resistant and require little care; they can carry small loads for distances over rugged slopes at high altitudes.