Beatrice's Goat Got Her to College

There was an op-ed piece in the NY Times last week by columnist Nicolas Kristof in honor of Beatrice Biira, the first person from her village in Uganda to earn a college degree in America. And now she's headed off for a graduate degree in Public Service.

Beatrice's life is probably the most famous success story for Heifer International, a non-profit that seeks to eradicate hunger and poverty by providing struggling families throughout the world with livestock. But they don't stop there.

Over the years Heifer has developed a comprehensive and holistic approach by which the entire community is educated on how to care for the animals, raise them in a manner that enhances rather than taxes the local environment and successfully market any products, such as milk or wool, that the animal produces. Animals chosen are always regionally appropriate, and the family that receives the animal commits to a contractual agreement in which the first offspring are passed onto another family in need in their community who has also completed all the necessary training.

Thus the recipients of Heifer's gifts are truly empowered in that they not only begin to create financial independence for themselves, they also help others in their community do the same. Heifer also creates empowerment by insisting that all members of a family are included in all aspects of a project, including decisions, so that traditionally disadvantages groups, such as women, are no longer passive recipients of their livelihoods.

So began the story of Beatrice. Her family received a goat and thus was able to begin saving money. It's quite likely that the money was then used to send Beatrice to school because the women in her family had gained equal say in how the family's money would be spent. Beatrice's hard work then won her a scholarship, and with the help of a few more Heifer friends, she was able to attend college in the U.S.

Beatrice has won herself quite some acclaim as well, not just the op-ed piece, she's been on Oprah. Her story is spectacular enough on its own, even without the bit of what I consider to be misplaced drama in Kristof's article He writes:

A crooked local official might have distributed the goats by demanding that girls sleep with him in exchange. Or Beatrice’s goat might have died or been stolen. Or unpasteurized milk might have sickened or killed Beatrice.

I'm sorry, I just can't let that little paragraph go without comment.

Let's start from the bottom. If pasteurized milk were required for humans to avoid illness or death, our species would been extinct long before we had the opportunity to begin studying science.

History suggests that the consumption of animal milk by humans began somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 years ago. And Pasteurization was invented around 1865. Using the conservative numbers, that's more than 9,800 years of humans thriving on unpasteurized milk, compared to less than 150 years of pasteurization.

Personally, I was thrilled to learn that Beatrice's milk was unpasteurized. I've begun doing some volunteer work with Heifer myself, and I was afraid that I would one day learn that they too were pasteurization propagandists, even though I have no idea how that could be made practical in a small, impoverished village in Uganda.

As for the first statement about corrupt local government workers demanding sex in exchange for goats, I do not doubt that sort of thing happens in our world, probably much more frequently than I would even expect. But I can say with certainty that it doesn't happen on Heifer's watch. (I even called my local Heifer office just to make sure.)

And for the rest, goats do die sometimes, such is life. But Heifer projects aren't centered around a single family, they are centered on a community. So in addition to providing extensive training in animal care as a preventative measure, Heifer project support is there to assist the community in coming up with a replacement strategy for a family that has lost their animal for any reason.

So, it was never a "Hey Beatrice, here's your goat. Good luck!" sort of situation. The take home message is that when livestock are integrated into communities in a holistic and environmentally sustainable way, the humans in those communities have the opportunity to thrive.

Beatrice embraced her opportunity fully and in her success prepares to return to her childhood community and pass on her gifts.