On July 5th, Josh and I spent the day exploring downtown Little Rock. Our first stop of the day was Heifer Village.

Heifer International is a charitable organization whose goal is to end world hunger. They go about this not by giving out food but by teaching people how to grow their own food. I first heard about the organization from my grandparents. Heifer is one of the charities that they give to at Christmastime (they like to give a goat.) When I moved to Little Rock, I learned that the world headquarter of Heifer is in LR and they have a big outreach facility called Heifer Village.

The Village was pretty neat. The first exhibit explained the goals and history of Heifer International. The idea behind Heifer is to give a cow not a cup of milk. They go into communities and give livestock and seeds but they also teach the members of the community how to properly care for the animals and set up farms. Part of the program includes passing on the gift. This means that the first offspring from the animals must be given to someone else in the community.

The rest of the museum was made up of a series of exhibits discussing each of the things that need to change to end hunger. They included things like medicine, education and infrastructure.

Here Josh is pretending to teach in a third world country

Where as I am apparently hiding…

Heifer also had a big garden out back. The building that houses their offices was built to be very environmentally friendly. They offer tours discussing all of the features of the building, but we decided to save it for later.

This is one incredibly green building!

Before we left we visited the gift shop. We bought 1/10th of a pig and a package of bean soup from the Women’s Bean Project.

We had a really good time and would consider giving to the organization in the future. One of the most interesting things that we learned was that Heifer does not approach communities, the idea for the project has to come from the communities themselves. That way the participants are more committed to the program and will follow the rules. Neat, huh?