2007 Wild Award Winners Announced, con't.

In most of the countries where Heifer works, women and girls are marginalized and disadvantaged, yet forced to bear most the responsibility for their families’ animals and crops.  From Ghana to Guatemala, women struggle, mostly without help, to keep themselves and their families alive. While women produce 80 percent of the developing world's food, they own less that 1 percent of the world's land and make up 70 percent of the poor.  This formidable situation necessitates mainstreaming strategies to bring about gender equity among the communities in which Heifer works. 

In 1988, Heifer began Women in Livestock Development (WiLD), an initiative with the following three purposes: to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and methods for women and resources for those women who are working with limited resources in livestock development; to address gender equity issues in small-scale livestock agriculture; and to enable women to care for themselves, their families, the earth, and each other.

Since then, WiLD has become popular among women and men in communities where Heifer works all over the world. The WiLD awards were instituted to honor individuals or project groups who have shown outstanding results in their livestock development initiatives and who promote gender equity and women’s empowerment in their work and life.

WiLD rewards those women and men who are making a difference in their lives and the lives of their families and communities with which we work. Every year Heifer recognizes the achievement of those women and their supporters through three types of WiLD awards – Grassroots Achievement, Meritorious, and Staff/Volunteer awards. The WiLD Awards program is sponsored by Heifer Foundation.

Because of these individuals and others like them, the advancement of women is becoming possible in areas where gender-equity was non-existent. 

If you’re interested in providing hope for a woman and her family in need, you can start your own or contribute to an existing WiLD endowment at Heifer Foundation.  For more information contact Heifer Foundation at 888-422-1161.

The 2007 WiLD Award winners include:

Grassroots Achievement Award
    1. Miss Jane Opolot, Uganda, Africa
    2. Yolmer Gutierrez Delgado, Peru, Americas
    3. Nguyen Thi Len, Vietnam, Asia/South Pacific
    4. Vasylyna Klimpush, Ukraine, Central/Eastern Europe

Jane Opolot

Jane Opolot
Accomplished Advocate
Recently widowed and diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, Jane Opolot of Uganda used her grief to lift herself and hundreds of others to self-reliance. Faced with a household of seven people and no savings after her husband died, Opolot started a self-help project with 50 other women, many of whom were also infected with HIV/AIDS, stigmatized and struggling.

The women pooled their contributions to buy chickens. The sale of eggs and offspring allowed them to expand their operations to also raise pigs, but Opolot wanted to do more. With Heifer’s help, she added goat breeding, finally gaining financial security for herself and the other women she works with. The group Opolot founded now numbers 207.

Yolmer Gutierrez Delgado

Yolmer Gutierrez Delgado
Redefining Gender Roles in Peru
In the desert-like conditions of Peru’s Piura region, rain is a stranger to the land and poverty is all too well known. It’s hard to make a living here, especially for women, who must struggle to survive in this harsh land and in a macho culture. One man, Yolmer Gutierrez Delgado, is making a difference by encouraging women to take leadership roles and training them to care for livestock.

Delgado, his wife and three children were among the first to settle this unwelcoming land. He began working with Heifer in 1996 and has since been an outreach livestock worker, teaching people how to raise goats. He also helped establish a group to encourage civic participation and positive gender relations in this traditionally male-dominated culture, and he continues to organize trainings about health and education, especially for women.

Delgado supported his wife and children as they became community leaders, and today the many women who serve as livestock outreach workers are helping to redefine gender roles.

Nguyen Thi Len

Nguyen Thi Len
Wife, Mother, Leader
It used to be that Nguyen Thi Len’s husband made all the money and major decsions for the family. But over the past five years, much has changed in the Nguyen household.
Because her husband was a hired laborer whose work was unsteady, the family needed a dependable source of
income. So in 2003, Nguyen Thi Len joined the Long Hoa Dairy Cow Cooperative, near Can Tho City, Vietnam.

Her original gift of two cows from Heifer has grown to eight, and the family now makes the equivalent of $9 a day selling milk. Her economic contributions to the family helped give Nguyen Thi Len the confidence to contribute in other ways, including making decisions about her son’s education. She also took up a leadership role in the cooperative, becoming vice-president of the managing committee.

Vasylyna Klimpush

Vasylyna Klimpush
Dedicated to Her Homeland
In her mountain home in Ukraine, Vasylyna Klimpush sees both beauty and potential. A member of the Sil’sky Hospodar Agriculture Service Cooperative, Klimpush champions the unique native Hutsul horse breed for its suitability to the climate and terrain and its important role in the region’s culture.

Klimpush became involved with Heifer International in 2002 at a time when she was unemployed and raising six sons alone. With the gift of a Hutsul from Heifer Ukraine, Klimpush and her sons, whose ages ranged from 5 to 18, were able to plow and cultivate a highland field. The horse also proved useful hauling firewood to keep the family warm during the long, cold winters.

Since 2002, Klimpush has become a leader in her group, recruiting her neighbors to participate in the Heifer project. And she was among the first to realize the Hutsul horses’ value as a tourist draw. Today, agritourism is thriving as visitors to the town ride the carriages pulled by Hutsuls as they accompany Klimpush on searches for medicinal berries and mushrooms.

Effatah Jele

Meritorious Award
Effatah Jele, Zambia
Sharing Her Success
In the Fisenge community of Zambia, copper mining, not farming, is the main source of income. And until Effatah Jele moved here in 1972, no one raised livestock. The Jele family began keeping cows because milk was so hard to come by. Jele became a community leader and helped establish livestock as a viable way to make a living in her community.

The family embraced their new livestock endeavor, and their herd thrived and grew. This allowed them to help their neighbors, many of whom were unemployed after the copper mines began shutting down.

Jele soon enlisted the help of Heifer International, which provided 20 heifers and 72 dairy goats for the Fisenge Dairy Cooperative. Jele encouraged women to take charge of their families’ animals when men were called to work in the mines. Her hard work was the foundation of success for this Heifer project. Without Jele’s initiative, this Heifer project would have never started, and she is responsible for providing a pathway to better nutrition and improved income for her family.

Yaroslava Sorokopud

Staff Award
Ms. Yaroslava Sorokopud
Heifer-Ukraine, CEE
Training and gender equity coordinator

Heifer-Ukraine Cornerstones create the basis for sustainable development and cooperation. In order to ensure the implementation of these Cornerstones in Ukraine Heifer-Ukraine has developed an institutional policy and job descriptions for its employees in such a way that the introduction of gender equity principles became a constituent part of the organization’s development and strategy.

The introduction of gender equity principles is not just one of Yaroslava Sorokopud’s functional responsibilities as a Training and Gender equity Coordinator, it is also an integral part of her lifestyle and way of thinking. During her work in Heifer-Ukraine Yaroslava’s strategic task was to include the understanding of the gender component into each of the 12 Cornerstones at all stages of project implementation – from planning to monitoring and evaluation stages. Heifer-Ukraine Cornerstones, reflected in the organization’s Strategic plan, are values of a positive way of thinking, values of equal rights and equal opportunities, and values of peace.

Yaroslava used a sample proposed by the headquarters to develop a training module on the Cornerstones. She then expanded this module by including interactive training techniques and adapted it to better reflect the Ukrainian national context, traditions and vision. Mrs. Sorokopud conducted this training many times for all projects implemented in Ukraine. She has shared her experience in the organization of trainings with Heifer projects in Russia, Armenia and Poland. Yaroslava conducted trainings for trainers from these offices and, thus, fulfilled one of the Cornerstones’ values – “Passing on the gift”.