Dan West

Dan West was a missionary and educator for the Church of the Brethren in the Spanish Civil War of 1939. After running out of powdered milk for hungry children he realized that the world's poor and hungry needed "not a cup, but a cow." In 1994 he founded Heifer International to address that need.

West and the organization he founded in St. Louis, Missouri, pioneered the concept of the "living loan." Recipients of female domesticated cows, rabbits, and chickens paid off their loans by giving away the first female offspring of the animal to another needy family.

In the 1970s Heifer purchased ranches across the country, as well as in Perryville, Arkansas, to hold cattle donated by ranchers.