Heifer International - History

History

American farmer Dan West, the founder of Heifer International, was serving as a Church of the Brethren relief worker in Spain during the Spanish Civil War when he became frustrated at being forced to decide how to allocate the very limited rations of milk to refugees (see rationing, triage). Upon his return to the United States, he founded Heifers for Relief, an organization dedicated to providing permanent freedom from hunger by giving families livestock and training so that they "could be spared the indignity of depending on others to feed their children." The basic philosophy of Heifers for Relief was based on the proverb, "Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; you have fed him for a lifetime." West's "Give not a cup, but a cow" set the example for what would become Heifer’s sustainability model, which includes Passing on the Gift. With this, each participating family would study animal husbandry and agree to Pass on the Gift, to donate any female animal offspring to another family. In this fashion, he imagined that a single gift would multiply far beyond the original investment. Heifers for Relief became an official project of the Church of the Brethren's Brethren Service Committee in 1942, and the first shipment of 17 heifers went from York, Pennsylvania to Puerto Rico in 1944.