5 th January 2006
Managing Director, Jim Patterson, explains how a unfortunate incident
with the printers, turned into an opportunity to help lift an african family out
of the cycle of poverty with a simple gift of a cow.
"In early December last year we were getting anxious, it was fast approaching
the Christmas break and we had yet to receive the Christmas cards from the printers.
A friend involved working for the charity Send a Cow approached me with the idea
of contributing towards their appeal. I decided to use the opportunity to donate
to the appeal, and notify all our clients that they would not get a Christmas
card, as we were sending the money to the Send a Cow charity instead. Surprisingly,
this was very well received by our clients.
To make the charity gift even more worthwhile, I received a letter from the
Send a Cow Charity explaining how the
appeal works, with a specific example:
Women in Rwanda have suffered greatly in recent years, not only from the genocide
of 1994 during which many lost their husbands and other family members,but also
from HIV/AIDS which has taken further lives. The Send a Cow projects
in Rwanda work with widows and orphans, providing them with training and livestock
to overcome poverty and isolation.
One of the beneficiaries in the Rusheshe project is Clautilda Mukaringina who
is a widow. She is caring for 10 family members, five of whom are her own children,
and five are orphaned grandchildren. Send a Cow presented her with a diary heifer
in March 2004 and her cow produced a heifer cow in the same year.
Her cow has been giving her between 10-14 litres of milk per day of which her
family drink 3 litres, the calf drinks 4 litres and the remainder are sold for
200 Rwandan Francs per litre. Clautilda has composted the manure and applied it
to her bean plants, which have changed from being thin and yellow, to lush greaan
plants.She has planted a kitchen garden from which she harvests a variety of vegetables
to feed her large family. Clautilda is saving the milk money to effect repairs
to her house, damaged during the war.
Clautilda has only just started to develop her farm but with the help Send
a Cow had given her she now has the skills and knowledge to card for her cow.
She is
now on an upward cycles out of poverty and has hopes for a better future for all
her family.
It is a very positive story of how a charity gift in England can transform the
life of a family in Africa-and not just for a day but hopefully for a lifetime.
It is something we would recommend to other individuals and organisations wholeheartedly.
Instead of sending a card to your clients which may not be noticed amongst the
hundreds of other cards at that time of year, why not instead send the invaluable
gift of food security to families struggling to escape poverty and tell your clients
why they will not be getting just another christmas card this year.
The Send A Cow organisation has a plethora
of different gifts from bees to chickens to suit every budget and provided people
in the 3rd World with a hand up rather than a hand out to people who are really
destitute, and see them reap the benefit for many years to come.
About Send a Cow
Don't wait for Christmas, visit the Send
a Cow website now, and buy a cow (or a chicken, or a goat, or some bees or
even an entire farmyard!
About G4S Security Systems Ltd
G4S Security Systems was formed in 1986 to provide specialist services in the
design, installation and maintenance of security and building monitoring services.
Using the latest technology available, the Company designs systems to cater for
the continually changing requirements of their clients.
The company is recognised as one of the most technically accomplished of the
specialist access control and integrated security firms operating within the security
industry. It has developed substantial in house expertise within its specialist
fields, and can provide the individually designed security system that matches
most closely the needs of each client.
The Company operates through a strategic network of 5 branches which cover the
whole country. G4S Security Systems has successfully designed and installed systems for
such well know clients as the National Power, JJB sports, Chelsea football club,
Associated News and Sun Micro Systems.
The Company is approved on the Constructline (formally NQS) list to a value
of £600,000 for each of the security disciplines of Access Control, CCTV
and Intruder Alarms ( ref W/0/4323/A). G4S Security Systems is fully NACOSS and BSIA approved.
