Send A Cow

A new friend of ours called our attention to a charity based in the UK called Send A Cow. The charity helps with agriculture in Africa giving small farmers more skills and even more livestock.

Send A Cow began in 1988 when a group of farmers sent female cows to poverty stricken families in Africa. The families agrees to send the first female calf to another family in need. The gift of 25 cows multiplied into many more.

As Send A Cow grew, they began to teach African farmers techniques to increase their yields. They also began to adapt sending livestock to helping families with the water and feed needed to maintain the cows. Send A Cow also began to give smaller livestock such a goats.

Send A Cow has offices in four African countries, their website has a page dedicated to each country to explain the work do in each. In Ethiopia, farmers there have to deal with soil erosion, as heavy rains there wash away the nutrient filled soil. In Rwanda, Send A Cow began to work with the returning refuges after the violence in 1994. The work in Cameroon focuses on water preservation as the country has an eight month dry season every year.

Below is a movie that shows what effect the work of Send A Cow. Peter Reade started a Send A Cow program in Rwanda in 1998, he returned 10 years later to visit those same families.