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Heifer International's mission is to end hunger and poverty and to care for the Earth using gifts of livestock, seeds, trees and training in sustainable agriculture community development projects to help millions of people become self-reliant. Since 1944, Heifer has helped transform the lives of more than 18.5 million families (94.5 million people) by giving them gifts of cows, goats and other livestock. Along with the animals, families receive training in animal care and conservation for environmentally sound agricultural development. We also provide training in community development, gender equity, sharing and caring, strategic planning and other subjects as needed, including literacy. The process takes several years and is not declared successful until the community shows sustained improvement in nutrition, income and self-reliance. Each family that receives an animal agrees to Pass on the Gift by sharing the first-born female offspring of their animal with another family in need, so each gift of livestock starts a chain of self-reliance that spreads throughout  entire communities.

Our mission is to help small-scale farmers in West Africa move out of poverty by earning sustainable livelihoods from their farms. We believe the solution lies in giving families the ability to invest their own resources in appropriate fertilizer, seed and modern agricultural techniques so they can enjoy increased harvests and income every year. myAgro provides increased financial access to family farms by giving local farmers the ability to pay for the tools and supplies they need on savings layaway, via a mobile money service that is accessible from even the most hard-to-reach villages. This innovation adapts an old concept – layaway plans – to a new context – rural farmers living on less than $2 a day – and it uses a familiar technology – the mobile phone – that is easy, convenient and trusted. We also provide our farmers with agricultural experts to accompany them during planting so they can gain the most benefit possible from their investment, and with direct market access to purchasers so they can get the most income from their harvests. Our model is an extremely efficient way of addressing rural poverty and food insecurity. Our vision is to move a million small-scale farmers beyond subsistence farming and out of poverty by 2025 by scaling our programs in West Africa and by creating a model that other distribution networks around the world can integrate into their own program offerings.