MillenniumPost
World

Gates to donate chickens to help fight poverty

The chicks will go to rural areas in two dozen developing countries from Burkina Faso to Bolivia, where the Heifer International charity manages breeding operations and distribution, according to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Raising and selling chickens can lift families out of poverty, and a farmer breeding 250 chickens a year could make $1,250 US, said the Foundation, which is partnering with the Heifer International.
“There’s no investment that has a return percentage anything like being able to breed chickens,” said Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft Corp.

He urged the public to donate through Heifer International.“The numbers today in terms of Americans who give to Heifer or things like that is actually quite small, so we’d like to see that scaled up,” Gates said.

 Referring to the proverb that teaching a man to fish will feed him for a lifetime, he said: “The parable could have been stated in terms of giving somebody a chicken and showing them how to raise chickens.”
Gates said he aimed to boost household chicken ownership in places such as West Africa, where it is now 5 per cent, to 30 percent. Gates made his announcement on the 68th floor of a new building at the World Trade 
Center, a site not typically used for showcasing chickens, he said. 

Next Story
Share it