The Heifer International Model of Sustainable Adult Education

Abstract

Heifer International, an organization devoted to ending hunger and poverty through sustainable development, has worked throughout the world by giving “living loans” of gifts of livestock and training while empowering individuals and communities to turn lives of hunger and poverty into self-reliance and hope. To train a country’s population is to increase that country’s “human capital,” and educating the population while expanding the human capital is a necessity in order for developing countries to benefit from globalization. The Heifer model of adult sustainable education demonstrates the importance of education and training for people of the developing world, and not only can this model be adopted in developing countries for emerging “learning societies,” but it may be used to inform policies and practices in the developed world as well.