Read to Feed® is a creative program that allows children to change the world, brought to you by Heifer International.

 
Read to Feed will foster in your children a love of reading, a passion to help others and a way to help create a better world.

Read to Feed is a reading motivation/service learning program. Children are inspired to read more books for pleasure, while raising money, through sponsored reading, to help end world hunger and improve the environment. 

Read to Feed is a global education opportunity. The issues raised by Read to Feed address countless related topics such as the root causes of hunger and poverty and depletion of the earth's resources. They'll be inspired as they learn how solving one problem helps to solve others. 

Read to Feed encourages children to read for pleasure and understanding. It is empowering. Children discover that they have the power to change the world. In addition to a global education opportunity, Read to Feed provides the opportunity to discuss other important cornerstone issues central to sustainable development (Heifer's work) such as the importance of:

• Goal setting
• Nutrition
• Gender equity
• Self-reliance
• Accountability
• Improving the environment

Read to Feed provides a way to help children understand and appreciate the complex web of relationships between people, actions and environment.

How does Read to Feed work? As a group, children view The Promise video and read Beatrice's Goat or The Day Papa Came Home, to learn about Heifer's mission and how sustainable development methods work. Children get permission from their parent or guardian to participate in the service-learning (fundraising) portion of the program. Children decide which animal gifts they would like to "purchase" through Heifer International for struggling families. Time and fundraising goals are set and the children, individually or as a group, get sponsors for the number of books, or units of time, they will read. Children begin reading books and participate in group discussions about hunger, world population, global food distribution, cultural diversity, sustainable development, the environment and other important issues. At the chosen time, children collect the money from their sponsors, and Mothers Moon sends the total donations to Heifer International.


Through Mothers Moon Storytimes, we have been reading the book "Beatrice's Goat" and enjoying the beautifully designed coloring pages that pique children's interest while educating them about world hunger, poverty, the environment and the world of Heifer International.

Viewing of the movie "The Promise" and reading of "Beatrice's Goat" are being scheduled at Back Door to the Moon in Winslow, and at Blessed Baby in Wilton. At these events information about the program and donation sheets are available. You may choose to instead schedule a private session for your group, and I will provide you with the materials.

Heifer International works to end world hunger and save the earth. For close to 60 years, Heifer has helped more than four million impoverished families in 128 countries lift themselves out of poverty and achieve self-reliance.

The idea is simple and it works. Instead of providing hungry families with a non-renewable source of food, Heifer International provides a "living loan" of an animal. The family's health and standard of living is greatly improved by what that animal can provide. This might be milk from a cow or goat, eggs from poultry, meat from rabbits, draft power from water buffalo or wool from llamas.

Key to success of the program is that Heifer provides extensive training in animal care, ecologically sound agriculture practices and community development. The result is to transform not just families, but the environment and community.

Another key cornerstone of Heifer International is "passing on the gift." Families who receive an animal repay the loan by passing on one or more of the animals' offspring to other needy families. That family passes on their gift to another family and so on. So one gift multiplies through the community.

Heifer International currently provides more than twenty seven types of animals that provide food and/or income to struggling families in forty eight countries (including the United States as well)

Some say that it was the children who helped Dan West, a farmer from Indiana and founder of Heifer International, come up with the idea "not a cup of milk, but a cow." 

Visit http://www.heifer.org/ to learn more about Heifer International.
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Other books on our Heifier International reading list: