Food For The Poor Employees Pitch In To Build a Home For The Holidays
COCONUT CREEK, Fla. (Dec. 18, 2009) – For nine years, Food For The Poor employees have given the gift of “A Home for the Holidays” to an unsheltered destitute family. This year’s home will go to a deserving family in Haiti.
Six years ago, Geronvil Andre, 62, began to suffer the effects of Parkinson’s disease. The degenerative disorder of the central nervous system has severely impaired his motor skills and speech, forcing him to quit his job. Huddled together in the stifling heat of their makeshift two-room mud shack, Andre and his wife, live with their nine children in Croix des Bouquets, Haiti.
Since Andre is unable to work in the fields tending to the animals, his wife struggles to provide for the family. With little education and few jobs throughout the area, she resorts to selling small amounts of kerosene and peanut butter spread on bread. Sometimes she even picks up goat and turkey manure in hopes of selling it to farmers. Stretching this meager income barely feeds their family.
For the Andre family there is no guarantee from where the next meal will come. In Haiti, one in eight children dies before the age of 5 due to malnourishment and contaminated water.
When even food is so hard to come by, the thought of buying a proper home is unimaginable for this family. The Andres’ current crumbling shack leaks when it rains and a good night’s rest is rare. A sturdy new Food For The Poor home will shelter the family, and offer them a chance for the future.
“They have absolutely nothing,” said Angel Aloma, Food For The Poor’s Executive Director. “The gift of a new house, with a locking door, offers the family an opportunity to break free from the generational cycle of poverty. We security of a Food For The Poor home makes it easier for family members to find jobs.”
The gift of a Food For The Poor home is a substantial, yet feasible option. The price of $2,600 can be successfully funded by the combined efforts of all employees. Food For The Poor homes can be built in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica and Nicaragua.
If you or your company is interested in building a home for a family, Food For The Poor’s catalog can be accessed through the charity’s secure Web site at www.foodforthepoor.org/giftcatalog, or a printed version can be requested by calling 800-427-9104. All gifts are tax-deductible.
Food For The Poor, the largest international relief and development organization in the United States, does much more than feed millions of hungry poor in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. This interdenominational Christian agency provides emergency relief assistance, clean water, medicines, educational materials, homes, support for orphans and the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance, with more than 96 percent of all donations going directly to programs that help the poor. For more information please visit, http://www.foodforthepoor.org.
Contact:
Jennifer Leigh Oates
Public Relations
(954) 427-2222 x 6054