Friday, September 14, 2007

Woo Hoo! Kids Against Hunger!

Back in May, we started the process of shipping a 40' container of food to distribute in Lempira. This is not just any food - these are highly nutritious, vitamin enriched, dehydrated meals, which, when cooked, appear and taste similar to the popular Honduran dish 'Arroz y pollo' (rice and chicken). We cooked a package and ate it ourselves, to make sure . . . no sense in distributing food that no one will eat, right? It was tasty, and as easy to prepare as plain rice.

The meals are created by an organization based in Minnesota, called Kids Against Hunger. The organization purchases the supplies to create these meals, and then groups such as church clubs, schools, girl/boy scout troops, etc, donate the money for the cost of the supplies, and actually put together the meals in packages.
After that, Kids Against Hunger partners with organizations which distribute the meals to the hungry all over the world. The big expense for us, of course, is the cost of shipping the containerload of meals from Minnesota to Honduras.

Allen worked with private donors and the Honduras government to arrange for the payment and the paperwork involved in shipping this containerload of food. The entire shipment is to be distributed within the department of Lempira, which has been officially recognized by the Honduran government as the poorest department in Honduras - and Honduras was recently ranked by the UN as the nation with the highest level of chronic hunger in this hemisphere.
We just received word today that the shipment - containing 285,000 adult servings or enough to feed 35,000 children's servings per week for twelve weeks - has been scheduled to leave Minnesota ten days from now, and is expected to arrive in Honduras around the first of October! It is our hope that we will be able to ship future containers of food more easily, once this first one is successfully behind us.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello to all the Sowers!
Rejoicing with you all that the food container is on its way! And that all those sweet children will have nutritious food for weeks! These little ones are the future of Honduras. If we can feed them physically and spiritually there is great hope (h'tikvah) for the nation of Honduras. I'm not sure I spelled it right but h'tikvah is Hebrew for great hope.
Love and prayers for you all,
Beth Webb

La Gringa said...

Another amazing story, Trish.

Bob said...

Trish:

Linda is cooking up a batch for her dietetics students from the packet you left with us this summer. I'll give you a report when I get it. Until then, can you let us know how much the whole efforts costs (the packets, shipping, etc.)?

Thanks

Bob

Honduras Sprout said...

Yay MN! My home state. You will have to give a follow up on how the food is liked by the community.