Egg Laying Hens for Haitian Families

GreaterGood.org is celebrating 10 years of Giving Where it Matters! Help us meet our goal to increase the number of hardboiled eggs distributed to students at school per week by contributing to our Egg Laying Hens for Haitian Families Project. When you #Give10, you provide 1 hen and 3 years of eggs to Haitian students in desperate need of better nutrition to thrive and reach their full potential. 

Thank you video from students at Matenwa Community Learning Center 

Nutritional Need Among Students in Haiti

According to a study we did with the students at our school, over 70% of students had someone in their household who felt hungry or who went without eating for the whole day because there was no food available.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Northern Hemisphere, with 2.5 million people living in extreme poverty (less than $1.25/day). Additionally 100,000 children under five years of age suffer from acute malnutrition, while one in three children are developmentally stunted, or irreversibly short for their age (World Food Program, 2015).

According to the World Bank, it is typical for Hatian families to spend up to 60% of their already meager income on the schooling of their children, paying for high tuition fees, textbooks and other scholastic materials (World Bank, 2014). With your help we can continue to support quality education, mitigate the financial burden on households, and improve child nutrition rates through this hen project. 

Milestones

• 379 hens distributed to 379 students. Thanks to you we met our initial goal of distributing 1 hen per student!
• 270 hens are kept at the school and provide 2.5 hardboiled eggs to 379 students per week 
• Hen care is incorporated into math & science curriculum for collecting, organizing and analyzing data into charts 
• Results of efforts to alleviate hunger through this program include an increase in energy, improved ability to focus at school and a decrease in headaches as reported amongs students

Haitian Student, Madona

After distributing a hen to each of the 279 Haitian students, MCLC set up a student competition to see which student could take the best care of his or her hen and whose hen would lay the most eggs. Ninth grader Madonna's hen has laid two sets of eggs, ten eggs total. Out of all of the students, Madona is in the lead with the most new chicks.

"My hen was very small when I first got it. I fed it well and it gained some weight. I put it in a safe place to sleep at night, in a tree surrounded by a tin fence, so wild cats wouldn't eat it. In February, after mating with a rooster, she had 5 chicks, 3 males and 2 females. I took good care of the mother hen and its chicks. She had another set of 5 chick after her eggs were fertilized a second time. This time around, one of the chicks died, but the other 4 are well. They are still small and I don't know their sex yet."
-Madona

• Madona (PDF)