The Mathematics of Milk

"Our 100 high school girls need milk for their breakfast," announced Fr. Habte, the director of our programs in Ethiopia, during our visit a week ago. “As you can see, we do not have any stores around us.”

Sung Jost Ioffredo, A Chance In Life Vice President and longtime donor (read more about her here) asked, "How can you solve this problem?"

Without hesitation, Fr. Habte said, "Well, each of our 100 girls will need at least a glass of milk. One gallon of milk equals 16 eight-ounce glasses. To provide milk to every girl, we need at least seven gallons a day. Now … a cow here produces on average three to five gallons of milk a day, which means that we need two cows to solve our problem." concluded Fr. Habte, doing quick calculations on his fingers.​

"And how much does a cow cost?" asked Sung, intrigued by the conversation.

"A good cow costs about $700," replied Fr. Habte.

You can imagine the rest of the story from the picture above. Sung offered to buy the two cows and shook hands with Fr. Habte to seal the deal. Our girls have now fresh milk every day and can start their school day with a healthy breakfast.

A question for you ... If we wanted to provide an egg every week for all our girls, how many chickens do we need, considering that they lay an egg a day? And most importantly … would you buy one for them?
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Grazie!

Gabriele Delmonaco
President/Executive Director

P.S. You get a closer look at our trip to the Benishangul-Gumuz Region and Boys' & Girls' Towns of Ethiopia here and here!