A gift that keeps on giving

If your friends have everything they need, you can always donate on their behalf.

For more than 60 years, Arkansas-based Heifer International has helped “millions of families in 128 countries” become self-reliant by providing them with livestock and the training necessary to raise the livestock to produce food—a long-term solution to self-sustenance rather than just giving finite donations of food.

In the case of Christine Makahumure of Rwanda, who had lost her husband and son in Rwanda’s 1994 war of genocide, a Heifer cow became both a source of milk for her hungry family and a way to make money. Makahumure was able to by a small house from the money she made selling the excess milk she collected from her cow.

Click on “The most important gift catalog in the world” to give a gift of livestock to a needy family “from Appalachia to Zambia.” A donation of $500 will purchase a full heifer; $50 will purchase a share of a heifer. A llama is $150; a water buffalo $2a50. A “hope basket” of rabbits and chickens is $50, and for $30 you can give a gift of a beehive full of bees, plus the training to be a beekeeper.