Part of the money raised by Gray Team students was used to donate a Llama to a family in Bolivia through the HPI project. A Llama is a rugged animal capable of leading families and entire communities out of poverty and despair. When resources are scarce, it is important that livestock doesn’t use up land reserved for people. At home in rough, mountainous areas, llamas are a blessing to families with limited pasture land. Llamas provide HPI families with invaluable sources of transportation, income and wool, which is prized for making blankets, ponchos, carpet and rope. Llamas are remarkably disease resistant and require little care; and they can carry several pounds for many miles over rugged slopes at high altitudes. YOUR donations have helped a poor family improve its life with the gift of a Llama. High in the mountains of Bolivia, inbreeding was causing the Llamas of the Aymara people to decrease in size each year. Overgrazing was wearing down the fragile, rocky terrain. By working with the Heifer Project, the people of this area are able to attend training sessions. They plant native fodder grasses to restore the environment, and they learn to follow better llama breeding practices. Because of YOUR donations, one more family will be able to receive a Llama and the proper training. As a part of the program, the first offspring from this Llama will be passed on to another family. You’ve given a gift that will keep on giving, again and again!

Goat’s milk is the only milk known to half of the world’s people, but 80 percent of mothers and children in rural areas do not have any type of milk or milk products. Some of the money that YOU raised was used to provide the gift of a dairy goat to help a struggling family in the Dominican Republic. Goats can thrive in extreme environments and on a poor, dry land by eating grass and leaves. Our gift of a dairy goat will supply a family with up to several quarts of nutritious milk a day-a ton of milk a year! Extra milk can be sold or used to make cheese, butter or yogurt. Families use goat manure to fertilize gardens. Because goats often have two or three kids a year, HPI families can start small dairies that pay for food, health care and education! Some of the goat’s offspring will be donated to other families, extending your gift well into the future!

Lacking year-round employment in logging, many families in Hancock County, Maine, are poor and undernourished. The Homesteading Project, a part of HPI, provides families with livestock and training to enable to use land to produce milk, meat and other commodities for consumption and sale. Your donations have allowed one more family in Maine to be included in HPI’s homesteading project, through the gift of a sheep. Entire communities depend on wool and meat from sheep. Your donation has helped a family though the gift of a high-quality breed of this hardy animal. Struggling families use sheep’s wool to make clothes, or sell it for extra income. Sheep often give birth to twins or triplets, and can graze on even the hilliest, rockiest pastures unsuitable for other livestock. Your gift has allowed one more family fight their way out of poverty, and make a better life for themselves!

To help hungry, undernourished families put protein back in their diets at little cost, HPI teaches farmers how to raise healthy pigs in countries where waste products are the only available feed. In Honduras, pigs eat rejected bananas, and in the Dominican Republic, they thrive on damaged yams. Using resources once considered worthless, impoverished families worldwide supply themselves with the protein and income they need to improve their lives. Some of the money you raised was used to donate a pig to a struggling family. You’ve given this family a valuable source of protein, income from the sale of offspring and natural fertilizer to nourish crops and soil. Even better, an average sow can provide a family with up to sixteen piglets a year! Pigs usually double their three pound birth weight in the first week, and can grow to more than 200 pounds in six months!

The Gray team has also donated a trio of rabbits to a poor family in China! These rabbits are a low-cost, high-yield gift that will help an impoverished family increase their protein intake and income. Rabbits are easy to raise; they eat simple foods, such as carrot tops, sweet potato vines and grasses. Rabbit manure can be applied directly on gardens without composting. And because rabbits have so many offspring, the process of passing of the gift multiplies our original gift! In November of 1983, four families in China received 105 rabbits from HPI. Each family agreed to pass on five rabbits to a neighbor for every female rabbit received. From that first gift, more than 40,000 pass on rabbits have helped over 2,000 families feed themselves and become self-reliant! Your gift will allow this wonderful tradition to continue! And the benefits of our gift will be passed on down throughout the years!

The gift of honeybees, which are the essence of industriousness and hard work, will help needy families around the world better care for themselves and the Earth. From India to the Dominican Republic, HPI bees help struggling families earn income through the sale of honey, beeswax and pollen. Beehives require almost no space and, once established, are inexpensive to maintain. As bees search for nectar, they pollinate plants. Place strategically, beehives can as much as double some fruit and vegetable yields. In this way, a single beehive can be a boon to a whole village. The Gray Team has donated TWO packages of bees, the box and hive and training in beekeeping to needy families in Mexico!

Finally, thanks to you, the Gray Team has donated TWO flocks of chicks to needy families from Papua New Guinea. Because of you, these families will be able to add nourishing, life-sustaining eggs to their inadequate diets. The protein in just one egg is a nutritious gift for a hungry child. HPI helps many hungry families with a starter flock of 10 to 50 chicks. A good hen can lay up to 200 eggs a year—plenty to eat, share or sell. Because chickens require little space and can live on readily available food scraps, families can make money from the birds without spending much. And chickens help control insects and fertilize the soil as well!

We congratulate each of you who participated in the HPI fund-raiser! You’ve given the most important gift in the world! Like a stone dropped into still water, your gifts ripple out for years to come, ending poverty, hunger and despair for families, villages, perhaps one day even entire countries! When a group of people work together, we really can "Make a Difference"! We’ve made a difference in the lives of countless people, all over the world, including right here in Maine. We hope that the most important difference that was made was closer to home. In your heart! We hope that you’ve discovered how good helping others can make you feel! We challenge you all to continue these charitable works in the future. Each of us, working in our own little ways, really CAN make the world a better place…