Heifer International takes on its biggest project to date — an $800 million campaign to alleviate hunger and educate the world.

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

Eight hundred million. It’s a big number and a lot of money. But if you want to grasp the real magnitude of it, give that number a human face.

According to statistics released by the United Nations, 800 million represents the number of people worldwide who are chronically hungry.

It’s also, coincidentally, the amount of money that Arkansas-based Heifer International is looking to raise by 2010 in order to bolster its work as an international hunger-relief and education organization. It’s a huge leap for Heifer, which just last year had a contributed income of $62.5 million, with 80 percent of that coming in through direct mail efforts.

Heifer International

What: An international hunger-relief and education organization

Mailing Address: 1015 S. Louisiana St., Little Rock, AR. 72203

Phone: 800.422.0474

On the Web: www.heifer.org

The Figures:
Employees: 305
FY 2004 operating budget: $60 million
FY 2004 contributed revenue: $63 million

The Mission (from the Web site): “Heifer envisions a world of communities living together in peace and equitably sharing the resources of a healthy planet. Heifer’s mission is to work with communities to end hunger and poverty and to care for the earth.”

History: Midwestern farmer Dan West was ladling out rations of milk to hungry children during the Spanish Civil War when he realized, “These children don’t need a cup; they need a cow.” West, who was serving as a Church of the Brethren relief worker, was forced to decide who would receive the limited rations and who wouldn’t — literally, who would live and who would die. He returned home to form Heifers for Relief, dedicated to ending hunger permanently by providing families with livestock and training so that they “could be spared the indignity of depending on others to feed their children.” In 1944, the first shipment of 17 heifers left York, Pa., for Puerto Rico.

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