Aid with Dignity

Jo Luck is President and CEO of Heifer Project International, a position she has held since 1992. Heifer, founded in 1944 and based out of Little Rock, Arkansas, provides livestock to impoverished families in over 125 countries.
HPR: What can you tell us about Heifer International’s approach to alleviating global poverty?
JL: Our approach is to involve the people on the ground and in communities to decide what are their goals, and what are their needs. And they always think, well do we want a cow? Well, you know they see the pictures of the cow and think well that would be great, but they don’t always have the land for that, so we sit down, and say we need to talk: What are your resources, what’s your environment, what’s your capacity? Then we require that you study how to care for the animal, how to care for the earth. We decide which families need the animals, we monitor, and we evaluate so if they’re not taking care of it we can take it away and give it to another family. We’re just there to support, share with them what we’ve learned. It’s really important that we have a conversation at the beginning about their core values that tie into their own cultures. We have our core values and cornerstones, but those may not be the same ones that their culture has, so they may add their own.
HPR: Heifer allows its aid recipients more autonomy, it seems, than another NGO might. What are the effects of that added freedom?
JL: What I love about it is they have the dignity. They’re doing it, they’re successful, and the passing on ceremony is one of the most awesome things you would ever experience in your life, that’s what everyone says. Especially in, say, Rwanda, with the genocide: A woman handing an offspring of her animal to maybe a man of another ethnic group. That sort of reconciliation is really a prerequisite to peace. And then they start to thinking about their goals. They build schools. When I interview women they all say that educating their children is their number one priority. And when these women know they’re going to have the resources to educate their children, they don’t have as many children. It has quite an impact on what I call population issues.
HPR: Accountability has been the critique of several NGOs, that perhaps there aren’t strong enough mechanisms in place to ensure that money that is given to organizations like Heifer is actually translated into development. What kind of accountability mechanisms does your organization have?
JL: I think accountability is critical. When we were looking at this about ten years ago, I said maybe we should consolidate our books from all our different regions. That sounds crazy and wildly challenging but if we don’t have the same procedures it’s so difficult, it’s like we have different standards. So we start going through each section, starting with Asia South Pacific looking at what their challenges are financially, then you know maybe the Americas, then I said a couple of years ago, it still isn’t right. We don’t want to make them do everything the west does things, but we want them to know general accounting principles. So we’re consolidating our books and we’re in the third year. Some people would call it a nightmare, because they’re all different, legally separate entities. Some don’t even have an accountant in the office. We’re doing it and we’re learning from the lessons and pretty soon our regional offices are going to be stronger financially. They’ll learn how to write grants, they’ll know how to handle their money, we’re trying to allow each country’s organization to become self-reliant just like we are with the families and communities. We’re doing it but it’s tough. And they’re coming in with a long laundry list, but what do you expect from these countries that are just coming out of communism, or some are struggling, the ones that you see on the news. But we’re working on it.
Sophie Angelis ‘13 is a Contributing Writer