OUR EXPANDING GOAT PROGRAM
For the past 3 months, our Community Development staff and Goat Supervisors have been busy buying 300 goats for 6 new communities up in the mountains where we are starting the Goat Program from scratch. This has been a challenge because it’s a considerable distance from the rural markets where the goats are bought, up to the communities where they’re going to live. So, special goat herders (whisperers???) have been hired to help take the goats by foot from the markets to the communities. It’s an exhausting trip for both the goats and the herders, but essential to the expansion of this important Livelihood Program.
Once the goats are given to the recipient families, our staff and veterinary technician Bruny Chevalier put tags in their ears and provide the goats with vaccines and medications to keep them healthy. The staff give the new Goat Supervisors in each community instructions on how to fill out the goat information forms, keeping track of offspring births and deaths, mating, illnesses, etc. All this information is entered into spreadsheets for our staff to analyze and for us to generate important statistics to follow the program. It’s a big job that takes many hands!
