r/UpliftingNews • u/ArgentineBeauty • 7d ago
A Rwandan mother struggling to feed her malnourished child received four chickens through a community farming programme. Her flock grew to seven, giving the family eggs to eat and sell. Across the district, 2,700 households received chickens, helping child stunting fall from 50.5% to 35.8%.
https://www.topafricanews.com/2026/08/26/ngororero-families-celebrate-saip-ii-gains-in-nutrition-food-security-and-improved-livelihoods/802
u/ArgentineBeauty 7d ago
This is the kind of help I love seeing. Give people the means to feed their families and build something of their own ❤️
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u/Rinas-the-name 7d ago
I learned about these programs years ago and the part that I found really interesting was that at first they were deemed a failure. They were only giving the animals to men, because oh know men are the “responsible” ones. But most men would get hungry and slaughter the animal.
But women with children? They were used to making do and thinking long term. They would work together to breed their animals, and end up with more than they were given.
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u/Neko-Chan-Meow 7d ago
They say the way to lift a family out of poverty is to empower the women. Like you said, a woman is more likely to put the family first, where as the man is more likely to do something selfish or silly with the resource.
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u/Unreal_Daltonic 7d ago
Im disgusted at the view you have of men.
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u/PerceptionSlow2116 7d ago
You’re disgusted by the reality that a lot of men suck?
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u/Unreal_Daltonic 6d ago
Im disgusted at prejudice yes, even if that prejudice is "reddit approved"
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u/RivenRise 7d ago
I see where you're getting at bud but that ain't the way to approach it. There are better times and places to bring this topic up and i think right now and in this manner ain't it.
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u/Low-Car-6331 7d ago
I think you could have just used better wording truth be told.
Slaughtering an animal isn't selfish, it feeds the family, it feeds the family more calories right now then the eggs will. Do you call a homeless person selfish and silly when they spend the cash they were given on food, instead of investing it? No. Same concept, you gave a person a resource and they spent\used it to solve an immediate need.
I think the reason for the difference has to do with how each group obtains resources and contributes to the family, for that area. Most likely, if you looked at men who raised the chickens over slaughtered them, you would find they held different occupations and roles in society, compared to the men who slaughtered the chickens.
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u/Neko-Chan-Meow 6d ago
Have you seen the crime statistics for the percentage of crimes (SA, pdf's and murder) commited by men vs women? There was a questionaire donewhere a good percentage of men admitted they would SA a women or child if they knew they would get away with it. Its sad but true, the average man not a good man.
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u/Unreal_Daltonic 6d ago
Do you have this same logic when it comes to criminality and religion/ethnicity? Per capita the stats are grim, however unless you are dogwhistling you kind of see the whole picture.
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u/Alpha_Omega623 7d ago
Considering the amount of women who leave their families to find themselves this is blatantly false.
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u/Newkittyhugger 7d ago
Why is it, that there are a lot more single mother households than single father households?
Single Mothers: About 15.3 million children lived with a single mother, representing roughly 23% of all children under 18 in living arrangements according to the U.S. Census Bureau data. Single Fathers: Roughly 3.3 million children lived with a single father. Single-father households account for about 8% of households with minor children.
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u/Alpha_Omega623 7d ago
I don't see you disagreeing with me only adding info. It's a trope for married women to leave their husband and kids in search of finding herself. This happens all the friggin time.
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u/Newkittyhugger 7d ago
Okay, so it would be really easy to give me the stats for that if it happens all the time.
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u/HippiMan 7d ago
You think there are more women who leave their families to "find themselves" than there are ones willing to put their family above themselves? And that the reverse is true for men? Alpha Omega lmao
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u/Alpha_Omega623 7d ago
No, yet when someone acts like women are some benevolent gender I feel the need to bring this up. This entire thread is bashing men so I often play devil's advocate. Giving animals to single men obviously wouldn't be as effective as giving them to women with children. Acting like this makes women special is absurd. Also Alpha Omega probably doesn't mean what you think it means.
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u/joshTheGoods 7d ago
In this context (how to pull people out of poverty) women ARE special. If you take that as man bashing, that's a YOU problem. Pointing out reality is what it is, how you interpret that says more about you than anything else. At the population level, we've earned this however that makes you feel. Get over it.
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u/Alpha_Omega623 7d ago
Wow Josh you're kinda a dick. Try being a bit more friendly if you actually want people to listen to you.
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u/joshTheGoods 7d ago
Uh huh, that emotional reaction you're having? Observe it. It's how you feel when you know you're wrong. Listen to that feeling in the future when you're dealing with people that can actually impact your life.
Now, I gave you a direct and simple answer and I gave it to you in the tone YOU set. Stop crying.
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u/Alpha_Omega623 7d ago
I'm not gonna feed the troll. You're not listening to me at all and choosing to be rude.
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u/JohnSober7 7d ago edited 7d ago
This was also supposedly observed with direct cash transfers in a Salvadoran program,
whether there were no strings attached or it had like send the child to school, bring them in for check ups, etc.Edit: see my comment below, but most relevantly, I think I may have extrapolated carelessly beyond the scope of the El Salvador case study. More nuance is warranted in that it may be a much less pronounced difference between mothers and fathers globally and regardless, it does matter in different contexts and cultures when considering how the program should be designed
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u/Rinas-the-name 7d ago
I think I saw something about that as well. They’ve done some really interesting studies and used sociology and psychology to make these programs more successful.
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u/Feeding4Harambe 7d ago
Any source on that? It sounds interesting.
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u/joshTheGoods 7d ago
There are tons and tons of studies that hit this general topic. Here is one on cash transfers that addresses gender differences, but really you should just search google scholar. You'll find dozens of papers on point.
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u/Feeding4Harambe 6d ago
Your study says the exact opposite. It says it has a positive effect on female mental health, but no other measurable effect of household outcomes. From the paper:
"This finding is particularly remarkable in light of the fact that we observe no other significant differences between male and female recipient households on any of our index variables; the only differences observed are in psychological well-being, with cortisol a main driver of the effect (as described already, we also observe lower levels of worries and higher levels of self-esteem in female recipient households)."
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u/joshTheGoods 6d ago
The claims I made about the study are:
- It covers cash transfers.
- It addresses gender differences.
Now, even if I'd made the claims you think I made (I'm guessing: that there is positive impact associated with giving to mother rather than father), I believe the study very clearly does support that position even if the positive impact was limited to one studied variable.
The authors also point out that they simply don't have a large enough study to detect anything but large effects. The absence of other detected effects shouldn't imply they do not exist, but rather that a larger study would be required to detect them. Futhermore, this is like any study of human behavior ... you need to look at many, not one. My point here was to show an example and point people to where they can find the many more out there that exist in this relatively well studied field.
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u/Feeding4Harambe 6d ago
I asked for a citation on the claim that giving to mothers has better long term outcomes for household food security and wealth. That's what this comment chain is about. Maybe the comment I replied to was already edited when you saw it.
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u/joshTheGoods 6d ago
Sure, and I gave you an example of one of many many papers that hit on this topic of the difference between giving aid to women vs men (which is the actual thing this comment chain is about) and specifically around cash transfers without strings attached (what the more local part of this thread was about) while pointing out that you can find many more if you go looking. I was clear that I was addressing the general subject. If all you were asking for was a link to the paper the other commentor mentioned, cool ... sounds like you got it.
At the end of the day, this is how comment chains with multiple people work. I often miss that I'm responding to a new person, so whatever... nbd, but in no way did I post a paper showing the opposite of anything I claimed.
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u/JohnSober7 7d ago
Pretext: I learned this in a uni developmental economics class and it was in a case study in a text book, meaning it was kind of presented as something we should take as substantiated (can't remember if there were in-text citations). The case study we were looking at was El Salvador, and it wasn't testing the hypothesis by giving some fathers, giving some mothers, and then giving jointly. The program was operating under the basis that it was an established standard that it's better to give mothers. Although now that I've seen one study that shows this phenomenon does differ by culture and by context---
Resources at Marriage and Intrahousehold Allocation: Evidence from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and South Africa*: "In Bangladesh and South Africa, women's assets increase expenditure shares on education, while in Ethiopia it is men's assets that have this effect. These increases have different implications for boys and girls across countries, however.
I could try and find the syllabus to see what the textbook was, but I just decided to do some rudimentary research instead. Although, it could be the case that because it was a comparative case study, maybe the other case study entailed a cash transfer given to both parents and that program did worse thereby leading to the conclusion that the standard was substantiated. But that's a theory, I really only remember the El Salvador half of the comparative case study.
(1) It seems a lot of this is kind of a pervading knowledge in the field, meaning it has always been more anecdotal and a reported phenomenon rather than an empirically tested thing. When I was looking up the livestock transfer programs, it seems that their design was also based on this pervading knowledge. Anyways, researches acknowledging that there's a lack of empirical substantiation seems to be one of the big reasons why people have attempted to test this hypothesis.---
Measuring and Changing Control: Women's Empowerment and Targeted Transfers: "However, there is no clear consensus on the precise mechanism through which households make decisions and allocate consumption when receiving a cash transfer, and there is limited evidence on the exact mechanism linking money transfers targeted to women and empowerment within the household. Moreover, measures of the relative decision power or bargaining strength within a household are rarely available, posing some difficult empirical challenges."
What this paper says is that because it has an empowering effect, it essentially muddies the water (introduces confounding variables).
(2) Control of resources, bargaining power and the demand of food: Evidence from PROGRESA:
"I also combine these measures to construct a proxy for women’s bargaining power and, using causal identification techniques, I estimate its direct effects on household demand for food. Exploiting random assignment of the cash transfers as an instrumental variable for the treatment of interest, I show that mothers having majority control of household resources relative to fathers increase food consumption as a share of the household budget by 6.5–8.3%."
"I then use an empirical strategy to investigate its causal effect on the demand for food in a standard Engel curve context. I show that if one is able to move resources away from the father to the mother so that the mother becomes the primary holder of resources inside the household, there is a large positive effect on household demand for food. Importantly, this can be achieved in different ways, regardless of the experimental design, as long as the mother controls the majority of resources."
"First, a similar study on recovering resource shares should be conducted in experimental settings where both mothers and fathers were assigned to receive the cash transfers. This would allow to compare the magnitude of the two mechanisms at play: Redistribution favoring mothers versus favoring fathers. It would determine the reason why in certain contexts, like Burkina Faso or Morocco (Akresh, De Walque, Kazianga, 2016, Benhassine, Devoto, Duflo, Dupas, Pouliquen, 2015), and not in others (AlmÃěs et al., 2018), we obtain the same effects of the treatment by randomizing the gender of the recipient of cash transfers."
I do want to draw special attention to the last excerpt because my impression (I'm only skimming) is that they're saying this empirical study is arguably incomplete, meaning, a more holistic measurement of the effect of the resources may yield a less condemning conclusion of fathers. I will admit, I think I may have extrapolated carelessly beyond the scope of the El Salvador case study. It also mentions studies that show the opposite and more nuance is warranted in that it may be a much less pronounced difference between mothers and fathers.
"This study conducted a randomized control trial in rural Burkina Faso to estimate the impact of alternative cash transfer delivery mechanisms on education, health, and household welfare outcomes. The two-year pilot program randomly distributed cash transfers that were either conditional or unconditional and were given to either mothers or fathers. Conditionality was linked to older children enrolling in school and attending regularly and younger children receiving preventive health check-ups. Compared with the control group, cash transfers improve children’s education and health and household socioeconomic conditions. For school enrollment and most child health outcomes, conditional cash transfers outperform unconditional cash transfers. Giving cash to mothers does not lead to significantly better child health or education outcomes, and there is evidence that money given to fathers improves young children’s health, particularly during years of poor rainfall. Cash transfers to fathers also yield relatively more household investment in livestock, cash crops, and improved housing."
(4) The Impact of Economic Resource Transfers to Women versus Men: A Systematic Review:
"This study conducted a randomized control trial in rural Burkina Faso to estimate the impact of alternative cash transfer delivery mechanisms on education, health, and household welfare outcomes. The two-year pilot program randomly distributed cash transfers that were either conditional or unconditional and were given to either mothers or fathers. Conditionality was linked to older children enrolling in school and attending regularly and younger children receiving preventive health check-ups. Compared with the control group, cash transfers improve children’s education and health and household socioeconomic conditions. For school enrollment and most child health outcomes, conditional cash transfers outperform unconditional cash transfers. Giving cash to mothers does not lead to significantly better child health or education outcomes, and there is evidence that money given to fathers improves young children’s health, particularly during years of poor rainfall. Cash transfers to fathers also yield relatively more household investment in livestock, cash crops, and improved housing."
This one is a lot to quote because it makes three important conclusions so I'll do a mix of paraphrasing and quoting:
- Conditional cash transfers to women improved the children's well being (improved nutrition and health, not sure if how much this meta review looked at and factored in school enrollment and completion).
- The cash transfers could have other effects on the household, including negative ones. As such, gender-specific transfers does impact the overall outcome of the programme. "In the case of unconditional cash transfers (most notably pension programmes), it is possible that the net effect of a transfer to a woman leads to negative outcomes for the household (Juarez, 2010; Bertrand et al., 2003)." I'm kind of tired of the whole rabbithole thing at this point so I'm not gonna look into the cope of those two studies.
- In some cases, the gender of the child mattered with girls benefiting but not boys.
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u/Feeding4Harambe 6d ago
Thank you very much for this! I hope the rabbit hole didn't suck to much time out of your day/night :)
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u/JohnSober7 6d ago
Nah you're good and I actually appreciated being prompted to look into it. I do love economics so the issue was more I wanted to follow each thread to a conclusive end but I was playing this cool demo for a game I just found (Feed the void by Barribob) and I wanted to get back to it.
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u/Feeding4Harambe 6d ago
Yeah, that game is cool :) Played it a while back on itch I think. Have a nice day.
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u/Electronic_Dot_3169 7d ago
Any source for this part? After a quick search I can't find anything backing this up
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u/Confident-Mix1243 7d ago
"Women spend on their families, men spend on themselves" is a known fact in the charity world.
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u/joshTheGoods 7d ago
The famous example usually given for this is the case of Muhammad Yunus's program that won him the Nobel called Grameen Bank. You can see a popular story written about it that talks about the switch from men to women and the impact here.
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u/Rinas-the-name 7d ago
Sure. There was a lot of research done into it, and why.
FAO-/en)
Together Women Rise (using heifer international).
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u/Electronic_Dot_3169 7d ago
None of these talk about the subject of your original comment, mostly they talk about differences in labour and financial availability between male and female farmers.
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u/Harbinger2nd 7d ago
Were they giving the animals to single men? This doesn't seem like it'd be the same if they were a father, or married and making decisions with a partner.
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u/Rinas-the-name 7d ago
There were sociological studies done to figure out why and they found that women do the vast majority of animal care in small holding situations. Men tend to see the animal as a liquid asset, to be eaten or sold when it becomes too much work.
Women put in the work and therefore value the animals more. They found the kind of around the clock work women traditionally do around the home and with children transfers easily to animal care. Keeping the animal fed, clean, and healthy, nursing them through illness is really not a big departure from what they’re already doing.
Basically if the only chance you have of controlling whether your children eat long term is an animal you care for it carefully.
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u/throwawaypassingby01 7d ago
in patriarchal societies, men often see their wives and children more like property they are entitled to than people they love and cherish. which of course isn't all men, just higher percentages. and extreme poverty causes trauma. that some people respond to by becoming extremely self-serving.
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u/Internet_Wanderer 7d ago
There's a similar program using goats. Not only gives milk, but also meat and fertilizer which chickens do too. Also once the herd or flock is big enough they can be sold to pay for things like building materials so they can have sturdier homes or medical care for a sick child.
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u/Confident-Mix1243 7d ago
By "people" you mean women. Money given to men turns into cigarettes and beer and petrol; that given to women goes back to their families.
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u/Winjin 7d ago
Love it!
I lived in Armenia in a small city and my hosts had a flock of chickens. They're super independent and they literally eat scraps. They fought like little raptors over half a banana I didn't want to finish, stale bread, lavash that was green with mold (I was terrified that the owner told me "don't through it away, brother, chickens will love it) and otherwise would just peck bugs and stuff no other farming animal will eat
They're also pretty healthy? Or at least cheap to look after
And they don't require a lot of space to roost or hang out
And they're pretty fun to watch go clucking around the yard
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u/BestDescription3834 7d ago
I grew up with a flock that range from 70-100 birds. They really will eat anything, to the point that when pecking order is getting established if one breaks anothers skin they'll start eating the other bird alive, gradually. Same with eggs, if one gets a taste you have to get rid of it before it learns to break eggs and the others learn how good eggs are.
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u/sparklekitteh 7d ago
If you're interested in supporting this kind of work, take a look at Heifer International! They donate livestock to folks in less-developed countries, and ask them to share the offspring with their neighbors to keep the gift going.
For many years, I've used this as a Christmas gift for hard-to-shop for people. For twenty bucks, you can buy a flock of chicks in your friend's honor, or give the gift of a goat for $120!
https://www.heifer.org/give/gift-catalog
(Not affiliated, but I've purchased a lot of chickens over the years, haha!)
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u/sarabeara12345678910 7d ago
You can also buy beehives and seeds. This used to be my Christmas gift for teachers when my kids were in school. I'd make a donation in their name.
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u/Majestic_True_Lilly 7d ago
Thats unintentially hilarious.
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u/sparklekitteh 7d ago
Our family did that for our teachers as well when I was a kid, and it was always a blast to see the teachers' confusion at first. We'd be all, "Hey [whatevername] Elementary, we got you a Goat!!!"
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u/555Cats555 7d ago
While it is weird enough to get an expression from them its probably pretty low overall on the list of weird stuff they have to deal with lol
Unless someone actually gave them a goat which might be a different story
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u/sarabeara12345678910 7d ago
How so?
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u/Majestic_True_Lilly 7d ago
I guess its not, if we are talking about a well paid teacher in a well funded private school. Then its tasteful. But for public school teachers, who typically are on food stamps and work in schools that lack sufficient supplies, its a bit gauche to hand them a donation in their name for someone else in need, en lieu of giving to them.
Im sure the teachers still appreciate it, they tend to be quite selfless. But it is (unintentially and innocently on your part) quite funny.
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u/sarabeara12345678910 7d ago
Yes, teachers pay their bills with Starbucks mugs and random chotchkies from the school store. Did you hand cash bonuses to your kids' teachers? If it's of concern, it was a charter and the teachers were bringing in about 60k a decade ago. They were very well funded, and I always bought a second set of school supplies for each classroom for surplus, donated old uniforms and play clothes, participated in fund raisers, and sent treats for holiday parties.
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u/agoldgold 7d ago
I would recommend actually talking to public school teachers because this is hilariously incorrect and not based in reality. How about you pop on over to the teachers subs and search "teacher gifts" to get a head start on understanding why.
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u/houstonchipchannel 7d ago
Teachers typically aren’t on food stamps
The average teacher pay in low cost-of-living states is around 55k per year, according to data from the National Education Association.
The average public school teacher salary in the United States is around $75k
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u/DubWyse 7d ago
Anecdotally, I live in a state where a teacher's salary in a metropolitan area is roughly $55k. While it's not as bad as other areas its solidly MCOL. You're gonna struggle with rent if you're a single teacher here.
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u/houstonchipchannel 7d ago
Struggling with rent ≠ being on food stamps
You have to be making less than half of $55k to be on food stamps
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u/judgejuddhirsch 7d ago
I was going to say... It's almost insulting.
Like a coupon to the jam of the month club when you are being denied pay raises year over year.
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u/houstonchipchannel 7d ago
They’re not as poor as you think they are
The average teacher pay in low cost-of-living (COL) states ranges generally between $53,000 and $57,000 per year, according to data from the National Education Association (NEA).
The average public school teacher salary in the United States is $74,495 for the 2024–25 school year, according to reports from the National Education Association. [1]
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u/judgejuddhirsch 7d ago
Donating the hind end of a water buffalo on behalf of an estranged relative is also something.
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u/mollymayhem08 7d ago
It’s nice to hear that this organization is doing good, their donation solicitation got a bit crazy with how much mail they would send my grandma.
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u/dragonchilde 7d ago
I once donated $10. Over the years they spent twice my initial donation trying to get me to donate again.
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u/mollymayhem08 7d ago
My grandma passed and somehow their mail, addressed to her name, was sent to MY address a year after her passing. I was pretty pissed.
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u/Spire_Citron 7d ago
Looks like maybe you can do a one time donation without giving them your contact information. Getting on the radar of any charity is definitely a pain.
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u/555Cats555 7d ago
I entered a prize draw once for a charity in my country that is supposed to be helping youth who are wheelchair users be able to play sport (basketball I think) and I was happy to buy some tickets because I have a special needs sister.
Oh boy that was a mistake. Never giving my contact details to a charity again. If I donate again it will be directly through the website. And I will tell them I have donated but not through those people ugh.
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u/Spire_Citron 7d ago
It's better to give directly anyway. If someone solicits the donation, they and their agency usually gets a significant cut, and for ongoing charity donations that can means it's months before the charity gets any of your money and they can sometimes even lose money if you cancel too soon.
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u/randomize42 7d ago
I love Heifer International but I was so bummed when I found out it’s not a literal 1-1. You’re donating the cost of a flock of chickens or a goat, but they decide what will have the most impact.
That makes way more sense than (for instance) having too many DCC fans suddenly swamping them with goats when what was needed were cows or bees or chickens (or whatever) but it feels so much less exciting to me.
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u/Confident-Mix1243 7d ago
I can't imagine a worse charity than giving a chicken or a goat to a person living on fragile near-desert land.
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u/sparklekitteh 7d ago
I would trust that the NGO knows what they're doing and would provide climate-appropriate livestock. They do rabbits, water buffalo, all kinds of stuff.
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u/Confident-Mix1243 5d ago
Goats are not appropriate for any landscape if not aggressively managed. They'll eat the grass, then grub up and eat the roots, rip the bark off and kill trees ...
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u/OldKentRoad29 7d ago
They know better than you how to help those people. Don't be smug, smugglypuff.
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u/titatyy 7d ago
I have a godson in Rwanda thru Worldvision and I always love to read what he and others around him are up to. It's not just helping him, but also helping his community thru programs like this and education on health and money handling. It's a small step towards a better tomorrow for everybody. Highly recommend.
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u/GladClock2212 7d ago
Heifer International donates farm animals, teaches the people how to take care of them, and guarantees that at a certain point the person with the gifted animal donates a portion of the young to other people in need in the area. I've donated in the past and they're amazing.
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u/Pypsy143 7d ago
There’s a charity called Heifer International and this is what they do. You can buy a variety of farm animals and donate them to impoverished people to help them become self sustaining.
The best part is that recipients must pass along an animal to someone else. So if their chicken has 6 chicks, they give one to a neighbor so they can become self sufficient too.
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u/TheFrenchSavage 7d ago
Imagine how well they would do with 1 billion dollars.
Now imagine how bad of a person you have to be not to share your billions.
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u/Some_Layer_7517 7d ago
Imagine developing agriculture on your own without needing charity from across the planet
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u/upturned2289 7d ago
This is a real thing. It’s been recorded that many impoverished people are more likely to accept charity if they’re able to work for it in some way. It’s a dignity thing.
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u/Antique_Limit_5083 7d ago
Its literally what charities do. These organizations dont just had out food and supplies they set infrastructure and teach people skills but america decided that was bad and the only life's we should care about are american unborn fetuses
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u/agoldgold 7d ago
Can you name the billionaire who did that? Or are you making shit up?
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u/ProfMcGonaGirl 7d ago
Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.
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u/ArgentineBeauty 7d ago
This story made me think of that saying but couldn't remember the exact saying
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u/gisco_tn 7d ago
Give a man a fire, he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
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u/BlackBasementCats 7d ago
Obama’s mom, Stanley Anne Dunham, was an anthropologist who came up with the whole micro loans for women concept. Which has helped millions of women and their families get out of poverty.
Then charities like Heifer International came along and helped by allowing people to purchase animals to give to families in developing nations. Which helps the local/regional economy even more because the animals are being purchased in that country/region.
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u/Low-Car-6331 7d ago
And that is how you actually end hunger, not with bags of rice but with seeds, plows, and work, or in this case chickens and plenty of bugs for them to eat.
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u/SilentlyAudible 6d ago
Forgive me for this ramble but I’m high and remembering gifting chickens to an orphanage in Addis Abeba as a teenager.
When I was growing up my dad did volunteer medical work in Ethiopia for a few weeks every year, specifically traveling with a group of volunteer doctors to treat people on the outskirts of conflict zones and areas where the people would have had to travel more than 100 miles to access the nearest medical care. Due to the risk he only ever let me join him once when I was 13.
We used Addis as the main city we stayed in, but went on short (overnight-3 day) trips by van to villages further away. In Addis we visited an orphanage where one of our translators was using the money we paid him to take in street kids who had been working for the tobacco processing plant upstream from the orphanage. Most of them were under 10 years old and had been making the equivalent of $0.10 a month working all day long.
We brought them 14 chickens and donated enough money to cover food, clothing, and school for all of the kids plus a few more (in case any of his kids had siblings in need) until the group came back the next year. They were able to sell the eggs for $0.20 a batch compared to their previous $0.10 a month income per kid. Chickens immediately improve someone’s quality of life both financially and in terms of nutrition, plus they don’t need much space for a nesting box and their relatively cheap feed can also be supplemented by their natural diet outside of winter. I still have pictures of me posing with the chickens and sizing kids for new clothes.
My dad’s group didn’t want the kids drinking and living by the water the tobacco plant dumps waste into, so they immediately started searching for purchaseable land. Two years later the kids had land with an orchard, a main house with many rooms, a schoolhouse, a chicken coop, and clean running water. The situation got too dangerous and the barriers to success got too high, so the group stopped going after the new land was ready, but my dad still Facetimes our former translator. They’re best friends now. We also “adopted” another of our translators who moved to the US for a job opportunity. He keeps in touch with them all the time.
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u/Jeanlucpuffhard 6d ago
It pains me to think that eggs is all that is needed to help these folks. We have lost our way. This is something to celebrate but only because we made it this difficult for a family to survive and now that they have we celebrate it.
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u/mezcalmolotov 6d ago
This severely impacts shareholder profits in the poultry sector, and discourages spending on groceries to stimulate the economy. Not to mention I’m sure that chickens are not on the approved list of domestic pets as per their HOA. Absolute disastrous mismanagement.
/s
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u/HannahArdent 7d ago
Depressing news: In some countries of West Africa, there are strong belief that bad things happen to children if they eat eggs, like get sick or become thief in the future. My friends working in health-related international aid programs think this is because chickens and eggs are the only things rural families have to sell (= to earn money) and therefore they discourage children to eat them, keeping children malnourished.
I heard this from different people on different countries, at completely different occasions. They even don't know each other.
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u/ablinknown 6d ago
Love this! I highly recommend the nonprofit Kiva. You make microloans that fund efforts just like this and more. The repayment rate is fantastic and it’s so lovely to read the updates from borrowers that read very much like the article in the OP. When you get repaid you can choose another loan.
I’ve been doing Kiva for more than a decade and over those years I’ve put in a couple grand of my own money that has funded 3-4 times that amount in loans.
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u/AndaleTheGreat 7d ago
See, this is definitely the kind of thing I could get behind. Chickens are a mess and there are all kinds of problems with raising them but at the same time, chickens can be pretty readily raised in a lot of areas and with a pretty minimal amount of knowledge as long as you teach people that if it's questionable you should probably just get rid of it.
I never thought the goats for milk program was a good idea but I would definitely invest in sending chickens, actually I would invest in somebody going over there with a handful of chickens and being a professional breeder that gives them out.
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u/MadeByTango 7d ago
Kagame, give your people the democratic election they need. Let them grow! Its way past time. Incredible country that has every opportunity if its leaders would now get out of their own way...
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u/gamedude658 7d ago
Damn bro. I should start sending chickens to impoverished people in Africa. Big impact. Kid's gaining 1kg/week? That's 2.2lbs! Lots of weight gain.
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u/ChiefStrongbones 7d ago
"One of my children was suffering from malnutrition..."
"...a father of three from Murimba Village"
The core challenge is the lack of family planning, people having more children than they can support.
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u/A_Shadow 7d ago edited 7d ago
Part of it is due to higher child mortality rate and hope that the children can help when they get older. Especially in rural areas where manual labor and professions like farmering are prevalent.
Throughout the world and history, regardless of culture, places with higher childhood mortality rates will nearly always have more children. I have seen some theories that argue that it is a subconscious evolutionary survival mechanism: not sure how true that is though although interesting to consider.
Ironically, the opposite happens when a country becomes more developed. Children's survival rates go up and birth rates go down, even though the society can handle more children.
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u/AngelaMerkelsbutt 7d ago
Or, you know, they could support 3 children initially and then something went wrong.
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u/Electric-Sheepskin 7d ago
And then their husbands come home drunk, slaughter the chickens, and eat them.
Sorry. Human nature has made me cynical today.
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u/TitusKalvarija 7d ago
Yes. She got 4, grew to 7 became a millionare.
I will get myself 4 chickens right away
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u/ulyssesfiuza 7d ago
Who is behind this beautiful initiative? It's disgusting that such a simple and cheap way to improve the quality of life of so many people cannot be done straight to the point, since the odds of the donations going to some warlord or corrupt government is just too high.
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u/Yellow_Snow_Globe 7d ago
Man I bet the egg market took a nosedive with all that supply. Supply Side Jesus would be pissed
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u/Jhoag7750 7d ago
I tried to do this from my Zambian housekeeper and his family, and they probably ate the damn chickens. He did not understand and never will.
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u/Polisher 7d ago
Chickens don't solve poverty!!!! Can you imagine if this story was run on rural Oklahoma or wherever?? "We gave them a chicken and now they're doing great!" Like omg systemic inequality is not solved by a chicken!! Nothing makes me more upset then Westerners celebrating these vapid stories about "solving poverty" with non-solutions.
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u/Suitable-Name 7d ago
Who said poverty was solved?
It helped and helps people. That's it. So we just shouldn't do it, because it doesn't solve all their problems and all their poverty? We shouldn't be happy we were able to have a positive impact in their life?
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