How Many Cows

We are going into my favorite gift-giving time of the year – GIFT A GOAT!

Since 2014, we have been providing female goats and goat care training to the students in Marbial, a remote mountain community in Haiti. A goat can provide so much for each family, starting with nutrition from their milk, which can be directly consumed. The goat can also produce income from successfully breeding and selling the offspring. The income from selling the offspring has helped out students with school fees, food for their families, starting other small businesses and other necessities.

When you gift a goat, you are investing in kids you will likely never meet, but whose lives will be changed by your gift. We have seen benefits of this program in the character development of the students who received goats. These students learn that hard work will pay off as they see their herds grow with more and more offspring. They value their goats and have pride in their herds. The students have also shown generosity in a beautiful way. When some students lost their goats in Hurricane Matthew, in 2016, their classmates stepped in, without prompting, and donated their personal goats to those students who had none. How cool is that?!

We are raising funds for our 2019 Gift a Goat Program. Our goal is $10,000, which will pay for the goats, vaccines, educational material and transport. We have small specialized teams travel to Haiti twice a year. Those trips consists of training the students and checking on the goats and their offspring. We also provide vet checks and treatments for community livestock – our vets have treated goats, pigs, dogs, cats, donkeys and cows.

For those of you that are familiar with our typical fundraising, we have changed it up this year. We are no longer going to use a crowdfunding site (indigogo, generosity, etc) because of the fees. Crowdfunding on those sites made it easier to see our fundraising progress and share the program, but I hope, at this time, you all are familiar with what we do and we can raise money in a more traditional way. We switched our program to be  under a non-profit, also working in Marbial, called Kythoni. Between Hydromissions and Kythoni, we have provided a lot of support to the community of Marbial, Haiti. We partner with the Haitian organization, Faith & Love in Action (also known as Aid International). Kythoni’s main focus is medical and they support the first (and only) medical clinic in Marbial. Hydromissions is still supporting the area by working on a water system and a roof improvement, both of which we hope to have in place by mid-March.

If you would like to buy a student for a goat, please donate $100 to https://www.kythoni.org/gift-a-goat and email me at Haitigoats@gmail.com to let me know of your donation. I will send you a photo of the student with the goat that you purchased when we get home from Haiti in April. It is so important that you let me know how many goats you donated so I can be sure to send you photos! 🙂

This video shows our Haitian partner, Marlaine, who started the school that we partner with for Gift a Goat.