A Cow Can Change Your Life

A cow can change your life.

That's how the seventh graders began their video to tell people about our Geography class fundraiser.  The students and I spent the past month planning a porridge meal to be served at the middle school and the international church in town.  The whole point of the event was to raise not only money, but also awareness about poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa.  The students selected Heifer International - an organization committed to ending hunger and poverty through the gifts of animals and farming supplies - to receive all of the proceeds from the event.

Before focusing on the fundraiser in particular, I had each of the students fill out a questionnaire about their interests and strengths, with the hope that I could create roles for the project that would illuminate their unique gifts.  Based on the results of the survey, the 13 students were split into teams - finances, cause promotion, publicity, art showcase, and photography.

Throughout the process of preparing for the fundraiser, the students amazed me...

The finance team immediately got to work on making a colorful collection box.

The artistic students combined their interests in music, filmmaking, and visual arts to create a stop-motion video with beautiful audio tracks recorded on an iPod during lunch.

The publicity team designed creative posters and gave well-prepared presentations about the event to not only the middle school, but also the church service of over 200 people.

The cause liaisons shared about the work of Hiefer at our events.

And meanwhile, our photographer captured it all on film!

[But she's not pictured because she was always behind the camera!]

Together we prepared the cornmeal porridge and did the set up and clean up. 

 It was great seeing all of the students involved in the whole process of putting on the porridge meal.

We made the water brown to represent the fact that many people in Africa do not have clean water.

We provided yellow cards for people to learn more about Heifer's work in Africa.

Between the two porridge meals, we collected just over 1000 euros (about $1560)!  We were able to "purchase" a number of gifts from the Heifer gift catalog:
- a cow
- a sheep
- a goat
- a pig
- honeybees
- rabbits
- irrigation pumps
- tree seedlings
- a flock of chicks
- a family farm care package
- a gift of clean water

These gifts will be given to families in Africa and have the potential to impact those communities for generations to come.  We are so grateful for our generous community for partnering with us and our God who can use these gifts for His purposes!

So, you see, a cow really can change a life!