Oh.my.goodness.  How am I supposed to tell you about our day at Heifer Village and Headquarters?

When we arrived on the site we were immediately impressed with the architecture and landscape of the whole property.  Wow.

In 2007, Heifer’s headquarters achieved the highest “Green Building” rating possible. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) platinum certification. -From Heifer.org

We took a “Green Building Tour” of the Heifer Headquarters and were amazed at all the ingenious ways energy is saved in every facet of the building and grounds.  PLEASE read more from the Heifer site! The top three take-aways (it was SUPER hard to choose!) that Mrs. Koehne and I had from our tour:

• Built on a previous “Brown field” or toxic waste site that long ago was natural wetlands- they have now completely decontaminated the site and reintroduced the indigenous plants to the property- and now the wildlife have even returned!
• The building is completely heated and cooled with water- which is collected from rainstorms via the roof and water collection. (Fun fact- when they had drought ONE MONTH, their utilities bill for the MONTH was more than what they had paid the previous 11 months!!!)
• The building was designed with the idea of creating maximum natural light- the few artificial lights required are LED and sense the amount of natural light and dim or brighten accordingly! There are no light switches in the building!

The Village:

Heifer Village is an incredibly engaging collection of interactive, informative, and inspiring displays and activities for children ages 0-99.  It offers free admission, boasts a fair-trade gift shop that kept us just as engaged as the exhibits (and we totally made up for the lack of admission cost in our purchases….) Finally, the cafe serves the most amazingly affordable, locally sourced, DELICIOUS food.  We would know as we enjoyed dining there for both breakfast and lunch! Two different, very knowledgeable and friendly volunteers treated us like royalty from Virginia and took us on tours during the morning.

Okay so our top three take-aways from the village (this was even more difficult than above):

• “Not a cup, but a cow.” Heifer is going about finding solutions to poverty and hunger in SMART, SUSTAINABLE ways that honor the communities and cultures they partner with.
  

  

  
• Just the overwhelming amount of INFORMATION and statistics that has been collected, analyzed, and shared about global needs- in ways that are easy to read and understand, but difficult to comprehend. (Does that even make sense??)
• What might not seem like my problem becomes a problem that matters to me. Helplessness becomes inspired determination to take the small, every day steps that can and do make a difference!  A KID can CHANGE the WORLD!

We took at least an hour of video footage that still needs to be watched, edited, and compiled for our third graders just from this part of the day alone.  Stay tuned for more about our trip to Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Arkansas (ROAD TRIP!) and more!

PS- If YOU would like to partner with us as we support the work Heifer is doing around the world, our third graders have a fundraising site to which you can make tax deductible donations with maximum global, long-term, sustainable impact!