Emergency appeal - South India Disaster Management

The floods, caused by heavy rainfall and overflowing rivers, resulted in widespread damage and displacement of people from 16.12. 2023 to 24.12. 2023. During the rescue operations, Fire Personnel rescued 6975 human lives that includes 3219 male, 3169 female, 593 children.

We all know that one year's rainfall hitted south Tamil Nadu in a day marking 100 cm in a single day without any prior warning, though lives lost were less but the livelihood especially small, marginal farmers, landless labourers, children have lost their education utilities.

So with help from GlobalGiving we supported the farmers especially single women farmers with gifting goats for a sustainable income. Gave education utilities like stationery, bags, notes.

The advantages of goat rearing are :

• The initial investment needed for Goat farming is low.
• Due to small body size and docile nature, housing requirements and managemental problems with goats are less.
• Goats are friendly animals and enjoy being with the people.
• Goats are prolific breeders and achieve sexual maturity at the age of 10-12 months gestation period in goats is short and at the age of 16-17 months it starts giving milk. Twinning is very common and triplets and quadruplets are rare.
• In drought prone areas risk of goat farming is very much less as compared to other livestock species.
• Unlike large animals in commercial farm conditions both male and female goats have equal value.
• Goats are ideal for mixed species grazing. The animal can thrive well on wide variety of thorny bushes, weeds, crop residues, agricultural by-products unsuitable for human consumption.
• Under proper management, goats can improve and maintain grazing land and reduce bush encroachment (biological control) without causing harm to the environment.
• No religious taboo against goat slaughter and meat consumption prevalent in the country.
• Slaughter and dressing operation and meat disposal can be carried without much environmental problems.
• The goat meat is more lean (low cholesterol) and relatively good for people who prefer low energy diet especially in summer and sometimes goat meat (chevon) is preferred over mutton because of its "chewability"
• Goat milk is easy to digest than cow milk because of small fat globules and is naturally homogenised.
• Goat milk is said to play a role in improving appetite and digestive efficiency. Goat milk is non allergic as compared to cow milk and it has anti-fungal and anti bacterial properties and can be used for treating urogenital diseases of fungal origin.
• Goats are 2.5 times more economical than sheep on free range grazing under semi arid conditions.
• Goat creates employment to the rural poor besides effectively utilising unpaid family labour. There is ample scope for establishing cottage industries based on goat meat and milk products and value addition to skin and fibre.
• Goat is termed as walking refrigerator for the storage of milk and can be milked number of times in a day.

These are the main reasons we chose of gifting goats.

Thank you once again for all your support and cooperation.

VOICE Trust is looking for volunteers who can support us in report writings, managing camapaigns, fundraise in GlobalGiving. Please contact connect@voice-trust.org