Nayiti Lydia is one of the beneficiaries who has received a dairy goat through Just Like My Child Foundation's Project Grace, a microenterprise program that has a partnership with Heifer International.
Lydia, a 23-year-old Ugandan woman, is married to Tebukoza Juma, 26 years-old. These two look after a family of five members, including orphans and vulnerable children.
In a humble grass thatched house, Lydia and her family live. The family is embattled with poor shelter, inadequate clothing and malnutrition. Even with free universal primary education, her children lack basic resources like pencils and uniforms to enjoy this free education. The family gets its meager income from a quarter acre of a coffee plantation. Lydia also practices subsistence farming of beans and groundnuts.
Lydia and her family received a dairy goat from Just Like My Child Foundation's Project Grace microenterprise program in August of 2012. With her luck, she got a pregnant nanny goat that was near to kidding, or giving birth. Just three weeks later, the dairy nanny kidded female twins. This was the rise of the "goats' milk delicacy" for Lydia and her family.
Lydia is overjoyed for the chance she had to pick a pregnant nanny. "I thank God for this chance; people from Heifer told us that we have to choose the goats by lottery. Each one of us had to pick a rolled paper with a goat's number. All chances came my way." Lydia explains.
Lydia says the information she received at the start of the project can now be confirmed true. "I doubted! I really doubted what we were being told at the beginning of the project. We were told that goats' milk is delicious during those trainings."
Lydia revealed her initial doubts, saying, "I had never imagined milking a goat, but now my children can't imagine spending a day without a taste of goat's milk."
Lydia is now a living testimony of all the myths about goats' milk in her parish.
You know people have many myths about goats' milk. Some say it is greenish, some say it has a bad odor. Many of my fellow farmers now visit me to consult about goats' milk -- my children tell them what a delicacy goats' milk is. Our family is filled with joy, not a single penny will be spent on cow's milk. Our goat gives it all to us.
Lydia has a word to her fellow farmers: "Goats require less space and labor to keep, yet they can support our livelihood like cows. I advise my fellow farmers to commit to the project as I have seen great hope from it."
In her conclusion, Lydia was thankful to the Just Like My Child Foundation and Bishop Asili Hospital for the dairy goats project. "I thank Heifer, Just Like My Child and Asili Hospital, we are realizing hope from your support."
This holiday season, all it takes is $400 to provide a "Hand Up, Not a Hand Out," to a family in Uganda by putting a family in the dairy goat business through Project Grace, a partnership between the Just Like My Child Foundation and Heifer International. You have the power to transform the fortunes of an entire family, just like the lives of Lydia and her family were transformed through this program.