By Joanne Gilhooly

The cow has always been a symbol of prestige in Uganda. A source of pride, it is also a major source of income in a country where 90 per cent of people live from the land - or try to.

In 1988, a group of Christian farmers based in southern England were disturbed to learn that many Ugandan children were suffering from malnutrition while there was a glut of milk back in the United Kingdom.

They had a bright idea - one of those ideas that seemed so beautifully straightforward, sceptics told them it would never work. If Ugandans needed milk and the English farmers had too many cows, they reasoned, why not send them some of their own surplus heifers?

The charity "Send a Cow" was born. Twelve years on, 300 cows have been airfreighted to Uganda, and now a local breeding programme is in place.

The indigenous Ugandan cattle - the Ankole, armed with formidably long horns - are beautiful and sturdy.

But they can only supply one to two litres of milk a day. Cross breeding with Guernseys and Friesians has seen that yield increase by 400%.

Small communities

Send a Cow has made a point of giving cows to small communities that are already working to improve facilities and farming methods in their villages.

Imelda Mirembe, chair of the "Wake Up and Work" group in south-west Uganda, was an ideal choice.

"We really praise God," she says, obviously enthused. "It was like a miracle. We said, are these people really going to send us cows? They wrote, they said they would come....but until we saw them, we couldn't believe it! It was all joy."

Sharing

And the charity has made sure that joy is spreading - everyone who receives a cow must pass on the first female calf to the next family in need.

More than 7,000 calves have been bred through the programme, helping 1,100 families in Uganda and neighbouring Kenya.

But it is not only through their milk and meat that the cows have brought new life.

During Uganda's internal strife, people had to take what they could from the land - and because training and resources have been poor, the land has become over-farmed.

"Send A Cow" ensures, therefore, that training is also offered in crop rotation methods and how to use the cow's manure to reinvigorate the land.

Homebrew insecticide

Teo, a widow, showed me the patch of land she is now farming using the agricultural methods she's learnt. She says her banana crop is eight times bigger.

Now she not only farms bigger and better vegetables, she has a surplus - she can feed her family and she sell, too. For the first time in her life, Teo has an income.

Now there are ingenious home-grown irrigation methods - a bamboo pipe with holes poked through it - and her own version of insecticide: a wicked concoction of cow urine and chillies, marinating under a banana leaf.

Nothing is wasted. It is the kind of eco-friendly, chemical-free, organic idyll those in the so-called developed world can now only dream of.

Women take charge

Send a Cow also - crucially - targets women.

Women only own 7% of the land in Uganda, yet they do most of the back-breaking work. By giving them charge of the cow, the charity has helped empower them, radically improving their status.

"Women have thanked us," explains Send a Cow's chairman, David Bragg, visiting Uganda from Devon in England.

"They are now esteemed in their own right. Some women are being elected onto local councils as a result of becoming progressive modern farmers."

Send a Cow now also supplies other livestock to families who lack the resources to look after a cow - they call it "StockAid".

Building links

The charity is also moving in to neighbouring Rwanda where it hopes the principle of passing on calves from one family to the next can help re-build communities riven by ethnic hatred.

"We don't go within a tribe or within a region supporting someone of ethnicity," explains Fred Katende, who is the Livestock Development Manager for Send a Cow, Uganda.

When he began David Bragg talked of giving "a hand up - not a hand-out".

Now the talk in the villages is all about "diversification", "marketing" and perhaps one day exporting organic goods to Europe where demand is far outstripping supply. Imelda Mirembe has plans for a yoghurt-processing plant and there is a strong sense that this is just the start.