Kids Against Hunger

Here are some sobering facts. Every 6 seconds, 1 child dies from starvation. 14,400 children die from starvation, malnutrition or hunger related and preventable diseases each day. These statistics come from the web site Kids Against Hunger check it out after you read about what the girls and I were blessed to participate in today with BCCC and others from the community.

Today, in 2 shifts, around 300 or so people from Sarah's age up to seniors citizens gathered in the gym at BCCC to pack meals for Kids Against Hunger. These meals consisted of rice, soy, veggies and a vitamin mixture (click here for the exact specifications). These seemingly small bags (390 grams) contain 6 meals or feed 6 people. By our overindulged standards, it is not much food-- about one cup of cooked casserole for each person. During the 2 hours we packed in our shift there were about 150 people and we packed almost 23,000 meals and for the day I think the grand total was 41,000 meals (which exceeded our goal of 40,000). These meals we packed are specifically going to the area around Port-au-Prince Haiti via our very own missionary from BCCC Paul Clark. The organization has sent meals to over 60 countries. Each meal costs approximately 23 cents. Imagine being able to feed nearly a quarter million people for about $50,000. This is the cost of an extravagant wedding feast and celebration here in the tri-cities for maybe 400 people if that. Let me say that again in case you skimmed over it-- 250,000 thousand or one quarter (oops had a typo here!) million people can be fed a nutritional meal and fill their empty bellies for about what one indulged wedding costs. I will not go into the costs of some Hollywood weddings.

Each team was an assembly line from the caller who called out ingredients to each person at each ingredient, to the person with the scale, the person with the extra bucket of rice in case it was more or less than the 350grams, the sealer who sealed the bags and the person who handed it to us at the very end of the line. Olivia was the brain in the operation. She stacked it up and kept count till we had all 36 then we passed it on the the man with the box and he packed it up then we started counting the next 36 bags. We, according to Olivia's calculations, stuffed 9 boxes.

Sarah started off helping where we were then she found a job that better suited her-- delivering empty boxes and then cleaning up spilled rice.

 We were on the news-- not that I saw it.

 Olivia and Sarah with the missionary! Paul Clark. He is about to leave for Haiti and live at the orphanage for a year if not longer. This is our preacher's son.

 Our team! Everyone got to have their own job in the assembly line! Notice, as I did, all of the smiles! It was a beautiful thing.

I saw Sarah doing this job (cleaning up spilled rice) and after a while I asked some of the adults what she was doing with the rice when she swept it up. None of them knew or had paid attention, so I snuck up on her and watched her to see what she was doing. She swept it into a nice neat pile, and then picked it up with her hands and placed it on the dust pan. Then she carefully stood up and watched it the whole time as she walked it all the way across the gym to the kitchen. All the while dodging through the crowd, then she dumped it in the trash. It was the cutest thing I have seen. I was very glad to see that she did not dump it in the rice bin with the rice refills. I would have been mortified.