Edmond Kizito
22 June 2008
Nairobi — SEND-A-COW IS BRITISH Charity organisation that helps fight poverty in Africa by donating cows to poor farmers.
Over 7,000 cows have been given out since the agency came to Uganda 20 years ago.
"That means at least one cow given to a poor farmer every day," said Send-A-Cow Uganda executive director Samuel Kawumi.
The NGO has created what could be the country's most versatile development model for fighting poverty.
Groups of between 30 and 50 farmers are trained in environment conservation and hygiene, how to manage their animals, grow crops, maximise land use and other basic resources.
"It is a model that works all round," said government surgeon Dr Leonard Omadang. "It combines animal husbandry with farming in modern, sustainable methods."
In diverse courtyards in the once deeply hopeless neighbourhoods, farmers told of tales of a success they never ever hoped to achieve.
One woman said the family was so poor her husband ran away to find another woman, saying she was the cause of his bad luck.
"I bought poison to end my life," said Safina Namujehe, 50, who - along with her younger sister - has tilled seven acres of land alone with no modern tools.
THEN I MET SEND-A-COW. They not only trained me and gave me a cow, they taught me how to maximise the use of my land. Now I use manure from the cow to enrich the soil," she added.
Her testimony is like a rainbow breaking through the clouds in a region devastated by war, tribal rivalries and cattle rustling that took away hope from a previously pastoralist community.
The Send-A-Cow model could well be the ideal model of development for poor farmers. They are taught modern farming methods, given a cow and monitored for hygiene and efficient land use by officials and experts hired the agency.
"It is a unique, all-round model. A farmer cannot fail. It is probably the only sustainable total-change model," said a development analyst in Kampala.
The Send-A-Cow model, which has follow-up veterinary and other agricultural support services, reaches four key regions countrywide - northern, eastern, central and western.
A high level of commitment is demanded from the farmers, such as training neighbours not benefiting directly from the initiative in how to excel in the way direct beneficiaries do.
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