Hungary for Service: Stop the Cycle of Poverty

The following post contains a power point that we prepared for our area humanitarian supervisors. Each project that we are involved with needs to be submitted to the area supervisors for their approval. After thorough research, we write up the project in the Church Humanitarian Service (CHaS) program. We do a short summary of the project, list goals and outcomes, financial needs and key players and contacts.

We have been researching this project for several weeks so that we can convince the area supervisors that this is not the typical "chicken project" that they have heard about from other countries. In this project, 20 disadvantaged families are chosen. Each family will receive 300 chickens (50 chickens at a time). Some are for eating and some for egg production. In typical "chicken projects" the chickens are used only for egg production. They do not eat the chickens and only receive 10 - 20 chickens per family.

So you ask, why so many chickens in this project? The answer lies in the fact that this project's main goal is to strengthen the family and keep the family together. In Hungary, if a family can't feed their children, the government takes the children away and puts them into the foster care system. The families in this program will be receiving chickens to eat because they are unable to buy enough food to feed their families and are thus in danger of having their children taken away. In addition, the families receive financial and psychological counseling, and tutoring for the children. SOS (the NGO that we are working with) also provides weekly activities for the families and helps the women organize a women's group where they work on crafts together. SOS provides child care during this time. They also provide a family vacation during the summer. For some of the families, this is the first time they have had the opportunity to leave the small village of Battonya. During this vacation they participate in many family strengthening activities as well as group counseling.

By the end of the first year, it is hoped that most of the families will be able to better provide for their families and that they will have the desire to start raising chickens on their own. Three or four families that were in the program last year are becoming more self-reliant and have already taken it upon themselves to start raising chicken from fertilized eggs that they are able to purchase. This will provide a sustainable source of meat for their families.

A big plus to this program is that the "chicken mentor" also runs the government assistance farm. Because of his association with these families, he has been able to secure "employment" for several of the participants in the "chicken project."

In exchange for all the chickens and the services provided by SOS, the families are expected to provide service to the community and other members of the program. During our visit we were told that the mother of one of the mothers in the program had passed away. She was so distraught that she didn't want to go to work. The other members of the program helped her through her grief and encouraged her to go to work. Without their help and support, this young mother would probably have lost her job. Prior to being a part of this program, these people really didn't have any experience with being supported or supporting others in such a way. Their lives were more in a survival mode rather than thinking of others and doing service. This program is enabling them to break away from survival mode and begin to think of helping others.

Positive things are already starting to happen with this program in the short year and a half since it was started. In order to completely break the cycle of poverty though, it will take many years and a lot of support - especially in the counseling area. It is hoped that the chicken part of the project will be self-sustaining in a few years meaning that the families will be able to buy their own fertilized eggs and raise their own chickens.

Clicking on the link below will take you to an online version of this power point or you can view the slides as posted below to find out more about this "Stop the Cycle of Poverty" project.

Stop the Cycle of Poverty

Three of these pictures are videos on the online version of the power point

Every city, town, or village has at least one white or yellow church. We drove through endless miles of yellow fields. It was breathtaking. The cranes were very numerous in the little villages with nests on top of telephone poles on a big disk that was built onto the pole. Apparently, cranes are very common in Hungary. Cranes in Hungary In the fall there is a big migration of cranes numbering as high as 85,000.