Some hilarious tidbits you should know before reading: Originally planning on renting a car for this trip with my grant money, I had decided it made more sense to Uber to the various places we would be visiting (really only one round trip a day from the Hotel). What I didn’t really take into consideration was WHERE on Earth Heifer Ranch is. What is only 37 miles from the hotel was actually like crossing over into the most rural of all rural communities. As in, we found out it would cost $39 to Uber there…. But then… um….. they had never heard of Uber once we got there. As in, we would be STRANDED in Perryville, Arkansas until a farm truck took us far enough down route 10 to find some sort of transportation. So we got the rental car for the day. 🙂 Just for kicks we tried to find an Uber ride once we arrived. Our fears AND the cost of the rental car were justified 10x over.
Also, it was a beautiful drive. ROAD TRIP!
When we arrived at the ranch, we entered the modest visitor center building and were greeted by a very friendly volunteer from Iowa! She and her husband are retired and travel to volunteer at the Ranch for two months at a time a few times a year. Her grandfather was one of the Ranch managers at one time. We were the only guests not in a large group or participating in one of their “expedition learning experiences” (read more about those below!)
The first activity was to view a short film called “Twelve Stones” about a women’s goat project in Nepal. You can watch this abbreviated version Heifer posted on Youtube.
The cornerstone of “passing on the gift” is depicted throughout the story in the film and we both found it extremely powerful! We can’t WAIT to have more conversations about passing on the gift with our students!
So after the film we were sweetly offered (again-Virginian Royalty) a tour of the Ranch via golf cart! The wind was chilly as we explored as much of the 1200 acre Ranch as we could.
Once built as a breeding ground/holding pen for animals waiting shipment to communities around the world, now Heifer uses the the site as an educational center and training ground. (Once the herds were built up around the world in the countries in which they partner, Heifer stopped shipping animals from the US, as they believe locally sourced EVERYTHING makes the most sense economically and environmentally.)
While there we saw two different groups of high school? and college aged students (over 100 in each group) who were visiting and staying in the GLOBAL VILLAGES…. which is a learning experience I very much wanted to be able to do, but the minimum group size is 12. There is a park in Maryland that partners with Heifer and offers a similar experience. That’s next on my list! Who wants to join? Here’s a description of the program from Heifer’s program guide found at their site:
“Global Gateway participants experience some of the daily struggles people in poverty face every day. Participants are randomly assigned to a village site representing areas such as Zambia, Thailand or Appalachia. Each family is given limited resources for their evening meal. Before they can eat, they may need to acquire resources from other families in the village, build a fire as well as cook their own meal. Participants in the two night program gain a deeper understanding of the struggles with both days spent in our global village. By participating in daily life activities such as preparing meals and doing chores, similar to those that Heifer’s Project Partners perform each day, we hope you will be inspired to take action in your own life that will positively impact the environment and the world around you. ”
So cool, right? We of course ended our day at the Ranch with another browsing of the gift shop. While we were there a woman was purchasing $372 worth of sustainable gifts (ordering them from the Heifer catalog) to fight poverty with a bag of coins, cash, and checks collected/raised by her group. Whoop whoop! Can’t wait for our students to put their hard earned $$ to use around the world!
Again, we got some great video footage and I’m looking forward to putting it all together for our students. Thanks for reading-see ya next time!
Learn.Go.Serve.Lead 