In the News

Later this month, comedian Kurt Braunohler will embark on a mission that he suspects may be “the dumbest way to make the world a better place.”

Another approach is a pilot project led by Jody Hardin, who is working with Heifer International’s Seeds of Change Initiative to create new market opportunities for small Delta farmers to market organic produce directly to central Arkansas consumers.

Virtual farms on Facebook are raising real food for the needy this holiday season, with “FarmVille ” charity drive. Players looking to light up their imaginary homestead with seasonal decorations by purchasing FarmVille’s “Holiday Lights” expansion pack had the option of earmarking the amount for hunger relief charities such as Feeding America and Heifer International. And with more than $1 million raised via the “farm coins” players earn within the game or purchase with real money, it’s been a very bountiful harvest.

A Reddit user named Rachel got a huge surprise this week when she learned that the “Bill” who was her Secret Santa in the site’s annual gift exchange was, in fact, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has donated a cow as part of Reddit’s Secret Santa gift exchange programme.

At Heifer International (heifer.org), you can buy an animal, such as a pig or llama, for an impoverished South American family. Seriously, imagine the look on your mother’s face when you tell her you’ve bought her a goat. Just before you’re banished from the house, you can offer up the remaining details. And if you can’t afford to spend $250 on a water buffalo, you can – again, in your friend’s name – buy a part of the water buffalo for $25.

Heifer International, an organization working to empower millions of people to raise themselves up from poverty to prosperity by providing multiplying sources of food and income such as livestock, seeds, trees and training in sustainable farming, today announced it is partnering with Zynga Inc. (ZNGA), a leading provider of social game services, for the second annual Oh, What Fun! in-game charitable giving campaign.

THIS holiday season, instead of giving your mother that instructional video on twerking that you think she is pining for, what about giving her something that will really make her dance?

Each year, around this time, friends and business partners start sending presents to my office. The reception desk gets covered with tins of candy, boxes of cookies, sometimes a few bottles of wine. It’s all very nice. But what I’d really like is a flock of chicks or maybe some honeybees.

These matters are best construed in context, but as you change the lens, the perspective, the more it becomes a human, global problem facing us all, the Family of Humans. The matters which cause this horrific, inhumane dilemma are too complex to go into here, but suffice it to say that there are many wonderful organizations designed to address the problem.