Volunteers Join The Pack to Help Starving Children in Haiti
COCONUT CREEK, Fla. (March 17, 2016) Wanted: team spirit. Food For The Poor is inviting teams of volunteers to Join The Pack on Saturday, June 4, to package 100,000 meals in South Florida for hungry children in Haiti.
Teams will be challenged to raise funds for this hands-on event, which will be at Advent Lutheran Church in Boca Raton in partnership with Feed My Starving Children, a Christian nonprofit organization that sends prepackaged meals to more than 70 countries.
Business leaders also will have an excellent opportunity to showcase their business to the approximately 500 volunteers expected to participate and make a difference in the lives of children in Haiti.
This relief comes at a critical time as Haiti is facing its worst food crisis in more than 15 years, according to the United Nations World Food Programme. Drought conditions brought on by the El Niño weather phenomenon have left Haitian farmers facing massive crop losses and doubled the number of food-insecure people since September, according to the U.N. agency.
June also marks Food For The Poor’s 30th anniversary in Haiti. When the charity first began its work in Haiti, it was responding to a cry for help for those living in wretched conditions in the country’s largest and most dangerous slum, Cité Soleil, located in the capital of Port-au-Prince. Five containers of aid were delivered in 1982 to prevent families from starving. In 1986, when Food For The Poor was officially licensed to work in Haiti, the charity delivered 72 shipments.
Since then, the relief and development work has not ceased. Join The Pack now offers a new, wonderful opportunity to help hungry families.
The easy-to-make, easy-to-transport meals put together by Join The Pack volunteers are an answer to countless prayers. For children in danger of starvation, these meals are like manna from heaven.
“These events bring together people of all ages, from churches to schools to businesses to police and firefighters coming together to make a difference that will change lives,” said Anthony Kasper, a development adviser for Feed My Starving Children.
On June 4, volunteers will don hairnets and gloves to create assembly-line packing teams where they work to systematically fill plastic bags with cups of white rice and soy pellets, scoops of freeze-dried vegetables and chicken flavoring that contains all the essential vitamins and nutrients a malnourished child needs to survive.
Once prepared with boiling water, each MannaPack provides six generous servings of nutritious food.
“People always are looking for meaningful ways they can get involved with Food For The Poor, and this is a wonderful opportunity to do something on a large scale with local volunteers,” said Food For The Poor Executive Director Angel Aloma. “Words cannot express the gratitude Food For The Poor has for volunteers helping us provide a steady supply of nutritious food to feed thousands of children in Haiti. This is a tremendous blessing and many lives will be saved as a result.”
Feed My Starving Children and Food For The Poor teamed up for the first time in 2009. Seven years later, that partnership has added up to almost 50 million meals a year.
More than 250 tractor-trailer loads of lifesaving food were donated in 2015 by Feed My Starving Children and shipped by Food For The Poor to children and families threatened by extreme hunger and malnutrition throughout the Caribbean and Latin America.
When Food For The Poor ships food or aid to those in need, staff members follow up by meeting the people who are receiving help. Follow this link to watch how one Guatemalan mother is using MannaPacks to bring her children back to health, www.FoodForThePoor.com/mannapack.
Food For The Poor is looking for businesses or individuals to form Join The Pack teams of 20 to raise $1,000 for the event. Sponsorship opportunities are also available. For more information on Join The Pack, please call Cassandra Celestin at 954-427-2222, ext. 4020. Or, to register for the event, visit www.FoodForThePoor.org/jointhepack.
Food For The Poor, one of the largest international relief and development organizations in the nation, does much more than feed millions of the hungry poor in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. This interdenominational Christian ministry 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 95 percent of all donations going directly to programs that help the poor. For more information, please visit www.FoodForThePoor.org.
Michael Turnbell
Public Relations
954-427-2222 x 6054
[email protected]
