GrowEastAfrica.org, a project of the Diaspora Burji Community Organization (EIN 47-3363829), is actively working in the Burji District of the SNNP region of Southern Ethiopia. Our mission is to help improve the livelihoods of rural poor Ethiopian families. In particular, we are focused on improving access to 1) quality education, 2) clean water, 3) health services and 4) rural agriculture and development. We started our initiative by engaging in the rural agriculture and development segment that impacts the most in need members of the community. We initiated two proven approaches to distributing goats and growing nutritional vegetables. Goats are sturdy, small animals and their milk are nutritional to children and pregnant women. Moreover, she-goats can give birth twice a year, and this will rapidly increase the wealth of poor families. After a few years, families can sell one or two of their goats and use the funds for medical costs and other urgent needs.
Since 2016, we distributed two female and one male goat per needy family in Billa Kebele for over fifty families. According to our field data, the number of goats per family is steadily increasing. For some families, the female goats are giving birth twice a year, while for a few families the she-goats are giving birth only once a year. The number of new births is impacted by the fertility of the goats, their age, feeding care, health and other factors. The other factors include unexpected waves of goat diseases that impacted the area last year, environmental challenges such as drought and the inability of a few of the families to care for their animals. To address some of the challenges, we have instituted vaccination protocols, recipient training on animal care, and monthly visits of the goats by a trained animal husbandry person to check up on the wellbeing of the goats and recipient families. We are excited about the continued improvement in the care of the goats and the resulting increase in its population. As a result, all of our recipients are much better off today than they were before.