Cornerstone: Genuine Need and Justice

A woman shares during a meeting of a Belsi, Nepal Self-Help Group. Many members of the group are Chaudharys, a disadvantaged ethnic group in Nepal.

In many parts of the world, poverty has many degrees and faces. It is Heifer's belief that if we work to alleviate the poverty of the least fortunate we will create the ground work to pull a whole community out of poverty.

Heifer's Genuine Need and Justice Cornerstone, helps to guide our work so that we are always making sure that we are working with the people who most need it. Genuine Need means that those who receive livestock and training from Heifer are genuinely in need. There are many factors that influence our judgment of genuine need, but they include such things as:

• Food insecurity—a family is food insecure when there is uncertainty about where and when their next meal will come.
• Relative Income—we make sure that project participants are unable to gain a sufficient level of income to pay for essentials such as food, medicine, and education without outside help.
• We also consider factors such as the number of children in the household, HIV status, and other issues that would suggest that a family is truly in need of help.

The justice aspect of this cornerstone value corresponds to the need to overcome generational poverty that has resulted from such things as discrimination and racism. In many of our project areas, women have been denied access to education and income generating activities and so through this cornerstone value we often seek to ensure that women are the first to receive Heifer livestock and training. We also work with many people groups who have been rejected due to social status or ethnicity. In Nepal, for instance, we work with many groups who have suffered from discrimination due to the caste system. Though the caste system is illegal in Nepal, it still has a good deal of influence over social relationships. Heifer is helping overcome these barriers by working directly with women from lower social castes.

Another example of the way in which justice comes into play in our projects is our work with ethnic minorities in Thailand. In these projects we work with people who, intentionally and unintentionally, have been left out of Thai society.

Read the story of Sripri and Rossri to see the Genuine Need and Justice Cornerstone in practice. Sripri and Rossri are a couple who are a part of an ethnic minority in Thailand. Because of their ethnicity their opportunities were limited, but Heifer helped them achieve sustainable livelihood and the hope for a better life for their children.

How You Can Help
To achieve the Genuine Need and Justice cornerstone Heifer must do a great deal of evaluation and education. The best way you can help us do this work is to give where most needed so that we can put your donation to work in our important work to meet the world's deepest needs and bring justice to the poor.