CHAPEL HILL -- In 2000, Judy Sordean made her first volunteer trip to Honduras for Heifer International. She didn't want to leave to come home.

"It is such a contrast to the materialism of this country," Sordean said. "I felt a need to simplify, simplify, simplify in my own life. I was also challenged every day with accepting the differences in people."

Sordean, 56, the bookkeeper and office manager for Grimball Jewelers in Chapel Hill, will make her third trip to Honduras on Wednesday. David Preston, 49, a fellow church member at Binkley Baptist church, and the CEO of TRX Pharma, a Chapel Hill pharmaceutical business, will be joining her on his first trip with Heifer International.

The pair has funded their own nine-day trip, but individual donations of cash and other goods from the Binkley Baptist congregation have helped defray approximately half of the $1,800 cost. A children's group at the church presented them with a check for $248, raised for children in Honduras.

Donated livestock -- including cows, chickens, sheep and goats -- is pivotal to the success of Heifer International. These "self-sustaining gifts" become the foundation for a struggling village, often funding education for children. Animal ownership, and the acquired knowledge of how to care for them, is a source of great pride to the villagers, according to Sordean.

Recipients keep the offspring of their heifers for one year, then they give the calves to another family in a process called "passing on the gift." One secondary benefit of livestock ownership is that women of the village also become involved in the process, putting them on equal footing with their husbands in providing a livelihood for their families.

Parts of Honduras are still rebuilding infrastructure destroyed in a 1998 hurricane. Access to education is limited in small villages, and village families are struggling to provide uniforms, educational supplies and schools within their own communities, according to Sordean.

But first, more basic issues must be addressed.

"Heifer International partners with the community to build houses so that they can be ready for the animals," said Sordean. "Mud and stick huts are replaced by more sturdy cinderblock homes."

In her 2005 stay in La Canada, Sordean took joy in "simple, yet exhausting tasks of hauling stone, sand, and water, and meticulously twisting wire into rebar structures for building."

Sordean has enjoyed seeing the finished product of her labors on subsequent visits, recognizing that in the villages where she and other Heifer International volunteers have visited, the standard of living has improved as evidenced by new churches, new schools, homes with running water -- and healthier and better educated children.

Sordean, who moved to Chapel Hill from Pennsylvania in 2001, will travel with Preston to Houston, where they will meet up with a group of 14 other volunteers from St. Andrews Church in Yardley, Pennsylvania, Sordean's former church. Then the group will travel to Chonco, a village near the Guatemalan border, where they will live in local housing -- most likely cinder block homes with corrugated roofs. Their Honduran hosts will provide them with drinking water, translation services and bus transportation.

Every volunteer carries an extra suitcase packed with donations of markers, crayons, clothing, and games. Sometimes these goods can be used to provide inventory for a small store. Sordean is packing fabric, needles and thread for hand sewing.

"We have some difficulty with airlines dropping the weight limits," she said. There is now an extra charge for suitcases that exceed 50 pounds, adding to the cost of transporting donated goods.

Preston is excited about his first visit to scenic Honduras. He helped sponsor a young man who volunteered in Honduras with Judy in 2005.

"It was a very maturing experience for that 10th grader," said Preston.

According to Sordean, Heifer International is one of the few groups of its kind that includes teenagers in their onsite projects.

Sordean first heard about the organization in 1999 when she attended a church-sponsored information session with her youngest daughter in Pennsylvania. At the end of the meeting, the group leader turned and asked her if she'd like to go to Honduras with her teenager.

"It was a leap of faith," she said, "because I didn't really know what I was getting into."

Founded in 1944, Heifer International sent its first shipment of income-producing animals, 18 heifers, to Puerto Rico, where malnourished children had never tasted milk. Today, they are involved in 128 countries, and 38 states in this country. The organization supports ecologically sound, sustainable farming and community development.

According to a 2005 report by the Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance (WGA) posted on Wikkipedia, that agency found that Heifer International met all of its standards for charitable accountability. The WGA found that Heifer International is truthful in its representations of how money is spend, does not allocate an excessive part of its budget for fundraising or administrative expenses and makes its financial statements readily available to the public.

Two years ago, 16 different groups volunteered their time in Honduras. Many, like Sordean and Preston, were associated with church groups.

"Heifer International really works," said Sordean. "It's not just an ideal. It makes communities sustainable."

For more information on Heifer International, see their website at www.Heifer.org.