Food for the Children

In her last post, Wendy wrote about our goal of having 100 sponsored kids so that we will be able to regularly provide a daily school lunch for all 250 children that attend the school in Carrefour Poy.  This is a big goal, but ultimately it will be the simplest way to make sure we can keep a school lunch program going.  It will provide long-term sustainability.

The thing is, we don’t want to wait until we have 100 sponsored kids to start a school lunch program.  That’s going to take a while, and in the meantime, these kids routinely have one meal a day.  They come to school in the morning without any breakfast, and they go back home after school still not having eaten anything.  This is so hard for me, a food-obsessed American, to comprehend.

Recently, Wendy and I were looking through the kids pictures again.  I like to look at what some of them want to be when they grow up.  Some of them have pretty lofty dreams–an engineer, pastors, nurses, an agronomist.  Those professions could really make a difference in the village of Carrefour Poy.  But to learn at the highest level, it really helps if you are nourished.  So when I started doing the math, I said to Wendy, so if we can raise the money to feed the kids a meal every day at school, that will bring their weekly meals from 7 meals a week to 12.  That’s right.  They would still only be getting 12 meals a week!  That’s how often many of us eat in 2 days…

To start a school lunch program will cost $250/week for 1 meal per day for 250 kids.  That is 20 cents per meal.  When I was a kid, I thought of money in terms of candy bars.  For the price of one candy bar, five kids can have one extra meal that week.  Or, there’s the whole ‘give up a coffee’ trade-off thing.  For one large coffee, two kids can have a meal every day at school for a week.  Or are you one of those latte-drinking types?  Man, you could provide 20 meals for the price of one of those babies!  The point is not for you to give up a coffee or a latte, or even a candy bar.  I think the point is that because we are blessed to live lives where we can treat ourselves to a coffee or a latte or a candy bar is evidence that we can afford to help feed “the least of these.”   This week I am working on a quilt for a special exhibit titled “the least of these.”  I am embroidering all of Isaiah 58 on this quilt, and let me tell you, the words are quite convicting.  I encourage you to read the words and see what God really cares about in our world.

Let me get back to Carrefour Poy and give you the bottom line.  It only costs 20 cents to give a kid a meal.  20 cents can make a significant change in the life of one child.

I know the problem of world hunger can seem overwhelming.  It can seem hopeless.  The way I feel about it is that Carrefour Poy is our starfish.  You know that story, don’t you?  We might not be able to solve world hunger, but we can make a difference to the village of Carrefour Poy.

Won’t you join us by donating out of your abundance to help feed the children of Carrefour Poy?