Food For The Poor’s Donor Relations department always has at least one housing campaign per year, and we have a meeting to sort of “kickoff” the campaign. With that said, I elected four advisors from Donor Relations to put together some ideas for the kickoff of our “A Stitch and a Prayer” campaign.
We were all excited to be a part of inspiring and motivating our coworkers to enjoy working together, as one body, to serve the needs of countless poor families in need of safe, secure shelter. We took the name of the campaign, “A Stitch and a Prayer,” and ran with it. Each of us played a part in pulling together a quilt of prayer, over 60, 9” X 12” squares of cotton material on which each team member wrote a prayer or scripture verse. We had them stitched together and then ironed on a “before” picture of one of the families in the center of the quilt. The name of the woman in the picture is Francisca Reyes, and she has two beautiful daughters who are 2 and 4. Food For The Poor interviewed Francisca in a Nicaraguan village called Carlos Huete Village.
The kickoff meeting was a huge success, full of high energy, bright smiles and determination to build as many homes as we can for our less fortunate brothers and sisters. We have decided to get an “after” picture of Francisca Reyes and her daughters in front of their new home to replace the “before” picture on the center of the quilt. Our seamstress is going to create a border around it and quilt it for us. At the end of our four-month campaign, we are going to send Francisca the quilt, along with a card that translates each of the prayers/scriptures into Spanish so she can hang it up in her new home or even cover herself and her children with it at night. The idea is to help a poor family and to encourage them with the knowledge that they are always surrounded by a “Quilt of Prayer” right here at Food For The Poor, from her brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus!
–By Alberto Gonzalez, FFP Senior Development Supervisor
