It was an opportunity to travel outside of the country for the first time, and, more importantly, experience first hand the life-changing work of an organization dedicated to ending hunger and poverty.
Pat Brower, human resources manager for Heifer Foundation, traveled to the east African nation of Mozambique in October of 2008 for a study tour through the projects of Heifer International, an organization with a mission of ending hunger and poverty through education and livestock. “It reinforced how I feel about Heifer, how I feel about the Foundation, and what we are doing,” she said. “Seeing it first hand I can tell people: I’ve seen it, I know it’s working and I know it’s right.”
One of the most exciting and surprising aspects of the trip, Pat said, was the variety and diversity of the projects that they visited during the two-week journey. “We got a real overview of the Heifer projects and the model, what it takes to get one started, and how long and drawn out it can be,” she said.
Pat said there was considerable poverty in the cities, but once they traveled into the countryside the poverty became even more prevalent. However, the first project they visited, which was one of the very first projects in Mozambique, demonstrated what Heifer’s mission could mean to the lives of a group that worked hard for a few years in the project programs. “All the people in that village had matching polo shirts and women had matching kampulanas,” she said, which was very different from the dress of the projects that followed.