18 Oct Eggs for Kids
With the help of the Forest Health Alliance, a group of Congolese widows has formed a cooperative to run a poultry farm. They can now provide for their families—and help protect endangered gorillas in the long run.
The problem:
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, there are no social safety nets for the widows of guards who protect gorillas at Kahuzi-Biega Park. In addition, local schoolchildren—whose diet lacks essential nutrients, including protein—suffer from malnutrition, increasing their susceptibility to parasites and infections.
The solution:
Establish a worker-owned poultry-raising cooperative and provide an egg a day to children attending a local nursery school.
The philosophy:
Enrich the lives of human inhabitants to help ensure the long-term survival of the lowland gorillas who live in the surrounding forest.
The benefits:
- The women learn to manage a small-business enterprise.
- They earn much-needed income to feed their families.
- Children get nutritious eggs to augment their school-meal program.
- The community will see an alternative wood-stove design that uses 70 percent less wood, used to boil the eggs.
- The gorillas are less likely to be hunted and their habitat less likely to be damaged or destroyed by human encroachment.
How does it work?
- Funds to build the henhouses, buy the initial stock of chickens, give training and get the enterprise going were provided by Zerofootprint (Toronto). A second flock has been provided by the Holy Angels SAGE group from Buffalo, New York.
- Acting through the DRC-based organization Strong Roots Congo, the Forest Health Alliance is helping to make sure the program becomes fully independent and self-sustaining.
- Forest Health Alliance guarantees the widows a market for their eggs by purchasing an egg a day for each child at Kahuzi-Biega Environmental School. Funds to buy the eggs has been provided largely by James Brooks and his 1000 Classrooms program.
- You can help ensure the success of this program by donating to the Forest Health Alliance. Donations are tax-deductible and tax receipts are issued through the University of Toronto Great Ape Fund.
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