For close to 20 years, HPSA has been empowering people to change their lives.
The mission of HPSA is to work with communities to end hunger and poverty in South Africa and to care for the Earth.
HPSA, in partnership with others in transforming communities, achieving sustainable community development, improving the livelihoods of thousands of families and caring for the Earth.
HPSA began exploring the possibility of working in South Africa in 1995, soon after the end of Aparthied - after research and several successful pilot projects. HPSA was registered in 2000. HPSA is a non-profit organisation and a public benefit organisation under South African law. Since 2000, HPSA has worked in partnership with thousands of families in three provinces - the Kwa-Zulu Natal Province, Eastern Cape Province and Limpopo Province - providing rural farmers with the knowledge, skills and resources needed to develop their farms into sustainable small businesses capable of feeding and supporting their communities. As well as training and on-going support, HPSA provides limited agricultural inputs such as livestock, seedlings and trees to the most vulnerable households. In addition, each recipient agrees to pass on the equivalent of what he or she receives to another poor family. Through this simple concept, more and more families are achieving self-reliance through successful small farming.
Our beginnings started with Heifer International. As the Spanish Civil War drew to a close, an American relief worker, Dan West, found himself forced to decide which poor refugee children would get the meagre cups of milk he was handing out. Realising that this kind of aid could never be enough, he started an organisation dedicated to giving poor families livestock so that they could feed their own children, instead of relying on handouts - a cow instead of a cup. The first shipment of cows was sent from the US to Puerto Rico in 1944. Now, early 70 years later, Heifer and HPSA are still helping poor families to become small farmers so that they can feed and support their families. Since it first started, Heifer International has assisted more than 18.5 million families in over 125 countries.
