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Our Harvest project for 2002 was to raise money for Send a Cow. Send a Cow gives direct, practical help to poor farmers in East Africa, by providing, cows and other livestock, training in livestock rearing and organic farming, and low-cost veterinary and advice services

The gift of just one cow can make an enormous difference to a desperately poor East African family, enabling them to combat malnutrition with protein-rich milk and earn an income from the sale of the surplus milk. Manure from cows and other livestock can also double and even treble milk yields – making a real difference to families dependent on tiny plots of exhausted soil for their living. Families can invest their increased income in a better future: sending their children to school, or starting new enterprises, such as poultry breeding. 

Most of the livestock goes to women, because they are usually the poorest people in their communities and because this is the best way to ensure that help reaches the whole family. The initial gifts go on multiplying indefinitely, as each woman who receives livestock promises to hand on her animal's first female offspring to another poor woman farmer, who will do the same in her turn.

Visit the Send a Cow site by clicking here.

The woman featured in the photo is Christine Kato, a quiet shy woman from Masaka, in Southern Uganda. Christine received her cow 18 months ago, and since then her life has changed hugely. Before receiving her cow Christine used to work really hard for little return, she now gets an average of 13 litres of milk a day from her cow. Three litres go to her nine children, two are fed to her calf and eight are sold; she used the money received to buy pigs. As well as giving her a cow, Send a Cow also paid for her to receive training in organic farming techniques, such as contour irrigation channels, mulching and intercropping. But it is not only her crops that are showing the benefit, Christine's confidence and self-esteem have really grown. Her husband respects her more because of her farming success and people in her community admire her and want to join her women's group, people come to her for information and advice.