It works!

So this goat might not look like success, but I was thrilled to see him today. We were giving away goats today and a family came to the mission with a goat. I didn't notice the family come in, so I didn't think much of it, but when Edvens tied up the goat he told me that this goat was not one we bought at the market but was rather given to us by a family.

Why would a family give us a goat? When each family is given a goat, they sign a contract with us agreeing to give us one of the goat's offspring, and this family was fulfilling their duty. Edvens does a fantastic job with the families explaining the policy to them, but today I was thrilled to see that it really works out. The families really do meet our expectations.

So why is this important? Obviously its a great asset to the mission because we can continue to give out goats without having to purchase more goats*. That said, there is something else to the design of the program that makes the goat "give back" meaningful.

Families in rural Haiti (and in most of Haiti for that matter) do not have access to any form of formal credit. A report by the Clinton Global initiative indicated that 90% of Haitian families do not have a bank account, so in order to store money they have to either keep cash hidden under their mattress or keep something of value that can be sold at a later date (like a cow or goat). Keeping cash in the home is very difficult for most Haitians and can lead to serious problems. A goat or cow can retain value without the complications of cash. This practice of keeping animals as a type of savings account is common throughout the developing world. When I was back at Lafayette last winter I spoke with one of my favorite professors, David Stifel, who had just come back from a one year fellowship in Ethiopia, and he said that families in rural Ethiopia kept animals for the same reason Haitian families kept animals.

Out hope for this project is that the goats and cow that we give can act as an "investment". We only buy young female goats and cows that are able to reproduce for years to come. The hope of the donated animal is that it will continue to have offspring so the family can use it as a type of "living" trust fund that throws off interest every year in the form of two or three young goats or cows. 

 

The only problem with this is that the family, or rather someone in the family with lower ideals, might take the goat or the cow and sell it for some immediate pleasure right after we give it to them. I can see a bad situation where we give a family a goat and then the father of that family takes the goat and sells it right away to pay for alcohol. This is not what we want. We want the family to use the goat or cow as a fund to pay for things like education and medical care. Even though the families sign a contract and we do everything we can to encourage them to respect the intentions of our gift, this doesn't physically stop someone in the family from selling the goat right after we give it to them.

 

I was nervous about this, but Edvens and Pastor Pierre reassured me that it would not be a problem. Today I saw the proof that families use this goat as a step up, out of poverty. This was incredibly reassuring. Edvens said that there are many more goats to come in the near future.  

 

Before I finish I want to thank Edvens for all of his hard work on this project. He does a fantastic job with the families and I believe the success of the program can be, in large part, accredited to his ability to work with the families when they receive the goat. Thank you Eddy

 

 

*if you bought a goat, the goat that is donated in your name will be a goat that we purchased in the market, not a goat that we received from a family in fulfillment of their obligation to us.