Maroon Edition Heifer Global Village Experience
Maroon Edition 2012 Heifer Global Village Experience
September 28-30, 2012
Heifer International is a global aid organization based in Perry County, Arkansas, offering education and resources to impoverished communities around the world. Among its many initiatives, Heifer operates a small teaching farm in Perry County. Weekend visitors to the farm are often allowed to participate in the “global village experience”—a 24-hour, hands-on experience of global poverty. In the global village, students split into several groups, based in small houses scattered across the farm. This includes a Latin America house, an Asia house, an Africa house, and an Appalachian house. Students are allowed to take into the village only medical necessities and a sleeping bag. Each house is then given a limited amount of a certain resource; for example, Africa gets water, Appalachia gets firewood, and Asia gets rice. In order to have a complete meal in the evening, students must work together to trade their resources and build a cooking fire. In the end, students experience a day in the life of a truly impoverished person. The hope is that they will learn to appreciate limited food and water resources and the necessity of cooperation for the community to succeed.
The global village provides an excellent opportunity for Mississippi State students to understand the communities in which Wangari Maathai worked. By planting trees, Maathai hoped to increase the autonomy of impoverished African communities, providing them with a needed resource base from which they could draw without resorting to outside aid. In the United States, where many of us take for granted the ease of access to necessities, having the experience of resource insecurity, even only for a night, can be very enlightening. The global village experience will thus help students put Maathai’s work in perspective, to understand how planting trees in poor areas may be tied to freedom, democracy, and justice, and help instill in them compassion for those in need which in turn may lead to lifetimes of community service.
The van pool will depart campus at 11 am on Friday, September 28 and return at midnight on Sunday, September 30.
Heifer Global Village Experience
Heifer Global Village Experience Forms
Please print out, complete and sign all forms. Then please send the first three forms via campus mail to Dr. Joe Witt in the Department of Philosophy and Religion, Mail Stop 9577.
Sign Up Form PDF
MSU Release Form PDF
Heifer Project Release Form PDF
Commitment Form (print and retain) PDF