Why Heifer International and Global Village?

Heifer International and Global Village – 

an Eighth Grade Experience

                   

“FILL THE ARK”

“I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”  – Martin Luther King, Jr.

The WCS Middle School participates in many wonderful community service projects.  During the 2000 school year the Eighth Graders took their community service global with their efforts to help those in the US and around the world.  Their approach was in the spirit of the proverb, “If you give a man a fish he can eat for a day; if you teach a man to fish he can feed his village for a lifetime.”

Heifer International is a non-profit organization which purchases gifts of livestock and provides education, leading to self-reliance for those in need.  They have expanded over the years to provide small loans and business training to help communities achieve their goals.  Since 1944 at least four million families in 118 countries, including the United States, have benefitted from their help.  Each recipient of an HPI animal is committed to passing on the gift of livestock through giving offspring to another family in their area, thus beginning the exponential growth of one small gift.
What began as one eighth grade advising group’s decision to raise money for Heifer International became, over more than a decade, a seminal experience for WCS students.  Not only has each eighth grade class participated for the last 15 years, but WCS juniors now volunteer to help sponsor our overnight adventure.  It was such a meaningful experience for them when they were eighth graders that they want to help the younger students grow through this experience.

When our students are young children they relate to their own small environment.  They live, appropriately, in a state of innocence to much of the pain and struggle of those outside their realm of experience.  However, as they mature and grow, and prepare to make that symbolic step from childhood to young adulthood as they leave Middle School and enter Upper School, our eighth graders begin to look beyond themselves and become aware of the reality of half of the population of the world.  As technology makes us all truly citizens of a very small planet, our students need this window on the world.

During a special interdisciplinary unit titled “We Are the World,” the eighth graders learn about hunger in the US and around the world, consumption of precious resources, and the circumstances which result in poverty.  They research countries which are helped by Heifer Project, and they present their findings to the public at a “World’s Fair” each year. They participate in activities which help them put faces and stories with the statistics in a program called “A Day in the Life,” as they learn about the lives of young people around the world dealing with poverty.  With their participation in a world hunger educational program during an overnight trip to HPI’s headquarters at Heifer Ranch near Little Rock, Arkansas, they face first hand some of those children’s challenges.  When they are placed in one of the Global Village families they are given hardships to overcome, limited resources they must trade, barter for work, or share, and living conditions which are unfamiliar. At first, the students’ frustration and inexperience becomes chaos and confusion.  But soon our students begin to recognize the advantages of hard work, listening to others, and team efforts.  They come back to school with journals telling of the way this experience affected them, what they hope to never forget.  A few responses from past eighth graders:

“I was given an inside look on how bad things were, I used to think only lazy people were poor, but now I know how much they work just to eat!”
“When only one person tries to succeed he is weak, but when many work together they are very strong.”

“I learned how to make cheese and bricks, and milk a goat.  The things that we can buy at the store and take for granted are things that most people have to work hard for every day.”

Over the past 19 years there have been Three-On-Three basketball tournaments, Bake Sales, Dance for Dollars, Kris Cakes pancake feeds, HotDog and Hamburger sales, Change for Change, Create a Card sales, Wacky Dress Days, a Mercado, and the amazingly popular Cow-A-Bunga and Misbehavin’ Day.  There have been matching grants by corporations and by families.  Six years our students earned special recognition from HP for raising over $5,000.  One year we gave a check for $20,000.  With over $70,000 in donations, our eighth graders have truly been agents for positive change in the world.
Through Heifer Project and the Global Village experiences, WCS eighth graders have more than met their goals.  They see the world through new eyes, they have begun to recognize and appreciate their own situations, and to empathize with others.  They have put into action the intangible concepts of cooperation, respect for others, and developing world leadership.  These experiences have provided a rite of passage to young adulthood which has affected many of our WCS students deeply, as they share when they return.  We are proud of their growth.

     

If you would like to know more about Heifer International, please visit this web site:

www.heifer.org