Farmers tending honeybees
When you sign up for PaperPosey’s newsletter, The Buzz, you help support farming families in the developing world with the gift of honeybees. To honor our industrious mascot the honeybee, PaperPosey is committed to giving one bee gift for every thirty new subscribers.
Each honeybee gift provides a family with a package of bees, the box and hive, plus training in beekeeping. So, you can feel good about doing this little bit of good in the world as part of our online community.
Why Bees? Our Project with Heifer.org
From Uganda to El Salvador, struggling families supported by Heifer International earn income through the sale of honey, beeswax and pollen. Beehives require almost no space and, once established, are inexpensive to maintain.
In addition, as bees search for nectar, they pollinate plants. Placed strategically, beehives can as much as double some fruit and vegetable yields. In this way, a beehive can be a boon to a whole village.
Our gifts will be made through Heifer International, a well established humanitarian organization based in Little Rock, Arkansas. Heifer CEO Jo Luck was recently recognized by Bon Appetit magazine for her humanitarian work. Here is an excerpt from the magazine’s web site:
During the 16 years that Jo Luck has served as CEO of Little Rock, Arkansas-based Heifer International, she has traveled to more than 60 countries, slept on dirt floors, been robbed, and survived an earthquake. But when your job is to fight global hunger and poverty, it’s all in a day’s work. The idea of Heifer International is simple: to help people become self-reliant by providing revenue-producing livestock like cows, rabbits, and goats. The organization requires each recipient to complete training that stresses values like gender equality, environmental stewardship, and philanthropy, so that donations have a lasting impact. “Every recipient of a Heifer animal must provide training, or the first healthy female offspring, to another family in need,” says Luck. “Each recipient becomes a donor, and there is great dignity in that.” This year, Heifer’s enormous impact was recognized by a $43 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which will help fund training of dairy farmers in East Africa.
Bees: A Vegetarian-Friendly Option
On the organization’s web site, we found a thoughtful response to donors’ concerns about exploitation of animals through farming. While probably still not ok with the strictest vegan adherents, the gift of bees is offered as a generally acceptable alternate to rabbits, chickens, cows, water buffalo and other farm animals:
Consider honeybees! Honoring a friend or family member with honeybees is a gift that shows you cherish both people and the environment. The way bees work together is a lesson for us all. They produce food, care for the young, recycle waste and create an effective, efficient community. They pollinate fruits, flowers and vegetables in the process – a benefit for us.
Heifer.org
Interested in humanitarian agricultural gifts? Learn more about the organization and see the many inspiring options at Heifer International.
