Heifer Heroes - Restituta and Isaya Mlelwa

By World Ark and Heifer Staff
Illustrations by Chris Lyons

Whether it's opening schools for orphans, stopping human trafficking, building houses for the poor or teaching fellow farmers how to thrive, these Heifer Heroes are doing great things to help others. To read about each winner, click on the photos below:
	Twesigye Jackson Kaguri		Anuradha Koirala		Mateo Paneitz		Restituta and Isaya Mlewa

Restituta and Isaya Mlelwa
Once grateful recipients themselves, Heifer participants Isaya and Restituta Mlelwa now open their lives daily to farmers across Africa eager to learn their advanced organic-farming methods.

To say Restituta and Isaya Mlelwa's farm in the Tanzanian village of Lunyanywi is flourishing doesn't begin to tell the story. Towering stalks of lush-green corn tower in fairy tale-like proportions several feet taller than a neighbor's yellowed crop planted with chemical fertilizer.

The difference? Organic farming that began when Restituta Mlelwa signed up for the Heifer dairy cattle project in 2000. Before then, they were desperately poor.

"Life was very, very tough for me," Restituta Mlelwa said. "In fact I was at the point of giving up due to that habit of him coming home drunk and having no money from his work. We were in the poverty cycle, living from hand to mouth."
Yet one dairy cow started the couple on a new path that just last year won them Heifer's top global award for achievement, along with regional farming exhibition honors. Today, they grow many varieties of vegetables, fruit trees and fodder trees and grasses for their dairy cows.

They have a modern brick house, a biogas unit for cooking fuel, solar panels for electricity and a classroom in the middle of it all where they teach farmers from all over Africa about the zero-grazing method for raising dairy cattle and the results of years of experimentation and testing in best methods for organic farming.

"Everything we have here came from the dairy cattle," Restituta Mlelwa said. "All of the things."

The couple has trained more than 1,700 individual farmers and 51 groups, including participants from neighboring Heifer project countries. They host the farmers in their home for a two-week course and provide meals and beds in their home and advanced hands-on training on the farm.

No chemical fertilizers or insecticides are used on their farm. Isaya Mlelwa even delivers some carefully mixed concoctions by teacup to the base of each plant in certain crops to jump-start growth. Thousands of additional visitors have come just to marvel at the colossal vegetables and perfect fruit produced at their farm. In January, Restituta Mlelwa traveled to Italy to teach organic farming.

"We love to teach other people," she said. "It's true, some who visit for training give us a small amount of money for compensation. But many people who come for training we do it for free. We were given the cows, and they have made us progressive and prosperous. We want the same for others."

Isaya Mlelwa agrees. "To us God showed us something that was hidden inside us—there was a talent, a trainers' talent, that was hidden," he said. "Since it has been shown to us we are capable of training other people, we feel we should use it to help others become prosperous in their lives."

— Donna Stokes

Reader Nominations
Thank you to everyone who nominated their own Heifer Heroes, people who inspired with generosity, hard work and caring spirits.

Humanitarian and best-selling author Greg Mortenson garnered a Heifer Hero nomination from World Ark reader Kathleen Donnelly, who admires Mortenson's ability to work across cultural divides to provide education for girls in a part of the world where it's not uncommon for families to educate only their male children. Mortenson first won widespread attention in 2006 when he published Three Cups of Tea, an account of how an accident during his attempt to scale the world's second-highest mountain led him to a remote Pakistani village where he first made his pledge to open schools for girls.

Of course, not all of our heroes are household names. A co-worker at the sustainable agriculture organization The Land Institute nominated Sheila Cox, a young woman who lives her convictions. Cox's dedication to sustainable living shows in her choice of housing—a repurposed grain bin equipped with a rainwater collection system that feeds her garden. No car for Cox; she rides her bike everywhere she goes.

We heard about Dr. J. Mascarenhas, who earned a medical degree in Germany but returned to his home country of India to offer free medical care in remote villages. In addition to doctoring with his organization Pasam Trust, Mascarenhas throws himself at the tasks of raising money and recruiting fellow medical specialists to lend a hand.

Our youngest nominee was Gwendolyn Morgan, an 18-year-old high school senior in Townsend, Mass., whose dedication to ending hunger and poverty inspired her to organize a "Four Courses for a Cause" meal that raised $1,100 for Heifer International.

—Austin Bailey