Wow. We don’t know what we’re missing in America. Haiti does. Right now I’m with people enjoying life, playing guitar, worshipping God. Not just with our words, but with our hearts. They practically have nothing yet they’re so satisfied with what God provides. Tonight I’m with them and I can’t imagine life any other way. The kids flock to get their picture taken, they play with my hair because it’s “blon”, they melt my heart. I know there is so much need and people are starving, that’s why I’m here. However, it is nearly impossible to live like this back home. Unaware, I came to Haiti starving as well, with a different kind of hunger.

Click here to learn about how you can help build a future for a child in Haiti with your $7 monthly donation.

Through the partnership of Feeding Children Everywhere, Open Door Haiti School has been able to grow their school from 350 students to over 750 students and counting! We hope that with your continued support, we can help this school grow exponentially in the next few years.

Together, we are Feeding Children Everywhere.

Our Merchandise Manager, Ashlyn Sites,
was able to travel to all three of the imPACKt events this month and she got to meet Cornel Onyanga and Duncan Kimani, the Kenyan Directors at CARE for AIDS.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen happier people,” Sites shared. “It was such a joy meeting Cornel and Duncan at our Hunger Project at Truman State. I was able to witness first-hand the inspiring imPACKt that the college students, CARE for AIDS and Feeding Children Everywhere made. The cherry on top was seeing the ear-to-ear grins on Cornel and Duncan’s faces at the final event!”

The Kenyan Directors traveled 21 hours to show their appreciation and see what a Feeding Children Everywhere Hunger Project is all about. As the Kenyan Directors for CARE for AIDS, Cornel and Duncan have devoted their lives to leading their staff in Kenya and expanding the CARE for AIDS Ministry.

“When I asked Duncan what he gets to do in Kenya, he replied with a simple and beautiful answer, ‘My job is to care for people,” Sites said. “This small phrase is the perfect explanation of the partnership that CARE for AIDS and Feeding Children Everywhere have: Individuals coming together with the aligning mission to simply care for others.”

Thank you for working so hard, Furman University, Vanderbilt University and Truman State University!

Together, we are Feeding Children Everywhere.

(pictured above: Duncan Kimani, Jen Stewart, College Development Fellow at CARE for AIDS and Cornel Onyanga)

The president of the company, Duane Hardy, stepped in and offered to donate a rental forklift to us for the day, which we needed to load all the healthy meals the students packaged. We’d like to thank Forklift Systems Inc. for their generous donation to Feeding Children Everywhere! We could not have loaded all the healthy meals without your help!

We are grateful for the generous support of our volunteers and partners, helping us in Feeding Children Everywhere. Click here to see if there is a way that you and your business can help make a difference at one of our three locations!

Together, we are Feeding Children Everywhere.

Throughout the academic school year, Furman students have been hosting various events to raise funds and awareness for CARE for AIDS through CFAU (CARE for AIDS University). The packing event on Thursday, called imPACKt, was the final CFAU event of the year.

As the trucks rolled in Thursday afternoon, Furman students were filled with excitement! It was finally time for the event they had been anticipating since early Fall. imPACKt gave Furman students a very tangible way to impact CARE for AIDS clients all the way in Kenya and it gave them an immediate opportunity to love globally.

As briefly mentioned in a post earlier last week, all the meals packed by our three CFAU chapters will be shipped directly to CARE for AIDS centers in Kenya to be distributed among CARE for AIDS clients throughout the year. While providing food is not one of our main focuses as an organization, proper nutrition is essential to our clients living with HIV/AIDS. We believe that if we can first meet their basic needs we can then begin to impact their spiritual needs.

By partnering with Feeding Children Everywhere our collegiate representatives on campuses such as Furman are being given the opportunity to touch our clients in a very direct way without having to travel abroad and our clients are receiving one of the most nutritious meals available.

With a goal of 300,000 meals total across all three campuses, Furman’s imPACKt event has put us at almost a third of the way there. We cannot wait to see what God does over the next few weeks on our other two campuses, Vanderbilt and Truman State!

This blog was contributed by Jenn Stewart, College Development Fellow at CARE for AIDS. 

They decided to form a partnership with Feeding Children Everywhere because providing food is not a main objective for their organization. By supplementing their food budget, they can focus on their main goal of empowering as many Kenyan families as possible.

This month, CARE for AIDS is partnering with Furman University, Vanderbilt University,Truman State University and Feeding Children Everywhere for imPACKt, three Hunger Projects where 300,000 healthy meals will be packaged by hundreds of college students.

“We have been partnering with students to host book drives for CARE for AIDS for quite a few years now,” Jennifer Stewart, CARE for AIDS’ college development fellow, said. “So when we decided to create a more elaborate fundraising model for our collegiate fundraising initiatives, we chose the three campuses that we felt had the strongest leadership.”

The meals will be dispersed among their 15 centers in Kenya, to be given to their clients in order for them to be able to complete the CARE for AIDS nine-month education, training and support program.

Each campus has rallied people through different recruitment events. CFAU at Truman State University for example, launched their “March Media Madness Week” with a collection of pictures asking students “Why do YOU CARE for AIDS?”

“They have also been reaching out to local businesses, churches, and other student organizations,” Stewart said. “To get the community involved in what CARE for AIDS is doing to impact the lives of Kenyans living with HIV/AIDS.”

Keep track of the university events on Twitter with the following hashtags!

• #imPACKt2013
• #ImPACKtTruman
• #ImPACKtFurman
• #ImPACKtVanderbilt
• #ImPACKtVandy
• #LoveGlobal
• #CFAU

This isn’t the sorority’s first time working with Feeding Children Everywhere though. They first heard about FCE through Heather Yoreo, event management coordinator at our Northeast office. They received an email from her last winter, looking for volunteers and informing them about a local Hunger Project.

“It really captured our interest,” Jen Su, a Kappa sister and vice president of the chapter, shared. “Philanthropy and service are two really important aspects to our sorority, so we were extremely excited to attend a packaging event where we could make a tangible difference in the lives of hungry children!”

After attending their first Hunger Project, Su stayed in contact with Yoreo and now they are hosting their first event at the university.

“We both knew this would be a great event to bring to the university campus because there are so many students that love service and giving back,” Su shared. She has been working closely with Yoreo to plan this event.

The unique thing about the Kappa Phi Lambda’s Sigma Chapter is that they are a small sorority on a campus with thousands of students and the sisters have been able to mobilize hundreds of volunteers for this event.

“They are hoping that this event will stir up enough interest on campus to make Huskies Fight Hunger become a larger annual fall event in the future,” Yoreo said.

“Our chapter is extremely lucky to have had the opportunity to work with Heather and Feeding Children Everywhere and we hope to continue working together in the battle to fight childhood hunger!” Su said.

The Kappa Phi Lambda Sigma Chapter at the University of Connecticut is great proof that a small motivated group with a heart to serve other can do great things!

Susan Huleatt, the human services manager for West Hartford, shared with CNBC that the number of people needing help has skyrocketed in recent years.

In honor of Single Parent Awareness Month, we’ve decided to share a few facts about single parents families and what you can do to help.

The Facts:

1. 27 percent of children in the U.S. live with only one parent.
2. There are approximately two million single-father families in the U.S. today.
3. About 35 percent of single-parents households live below the poverty line.
4. There are over 740,000 single grandparents raising grandchildren.

Feeding Children Everywhere’s Love Local program helps distribute meals to local schools’ crisis food pantries so that families like Simons’ who are struggling to make ends meet, can stop wondering where their next meal for their child will come from.

To learn how you can host a packing event in Connecticut and help families like Tara and Alexis’, click here.

To donate to a family in need, click here. Every dollar donated equals four healthy meals for hungry children.

Meat, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy products, or iron-fortified foods are the best sources of iron found in food, but most developing nations do not have proper access to such foods.

In Haiti, over half of the available food is imported from other countries making it more expensive to purchase than if it were grown locally, while half the population earns less than $1 a day. Anemia is a huge issue there where 58 percent of the women and two thirds of children under five are affected by this ailment.

Symptoms of anemia include: weakness, fatigue, dizziness, shortness of breath, and inability to complete work or school properly. Symptoms like these are the reason why students have a hard time concentrating at school.

There is something you can do to help. Feeding Children Everywhere works closely with our Haitian feeding partners such as Open Door Haiti to bring food to those who go would normally go hungry. The FCE lentil casserole not only provides a meal to a hungry child for 25 cents, but it also contains 8 grams of iron per meal, more than half if not all of the daily requirements for a person depending on their age. Our meal also contains vitamins such as B12 and vitamin A, which the World Health Organization (WHO) has stated will help improve the children of Haiti’s nutritional status and bring an even swifter end to their anemia.

Click here to donate to Feeding Children Everywhere and our efforts to provide healthy meals to hungry children in Haiti.

The four schools are Just, Potter, Sulphur Springs and Booker T. Washington elementary schools. Students must be enrolled in one of the schools and attend an after-school program in order to receive the meals. At least 95 percent of students in the four schools qualify for free or reduced meals and in 2011, Florida was among five states in the country with the highest rates of hungry children.

As many as 16 million children in the United States go hungry at night or even for an entire weekend. Childhood hunger causes devastating effects including stunted educational development. Feeding Children Everywhere’s Love Local program helps alleviate the need in families by Hunger Projects where the meals are sent to local schools’ crisis food pantries.

Click here to learn more about how you can join the fight against hunger here at home and make a difference in the life of a hungry child!

Together, we are Feeding Children Everywhere.

Last week our Northeast Operations interns had a hard time getting to an event because of the snow.

One of the interns, Alexis, cold and frustrated, shoveled her car out of the snow trying to get to the event. “I knew that I had both peers from the community waiting for me and children around the world who indirectly would benefit from my presence at the event,” she shared. “When I finally did get to the event, it was a great feeling to walk into such a high energy environment. There’s no doubt that it was worth the shoveling!”

She shared that the best part about her internship at Feeding Children Everywhere is that she enjoys meeting new people and bringing communities together. “This internship is fun and social. I would recommend it to anyone looking to better themselves, the community and the world!” she shared.

Another intern, Katie, agrees with Alexis. “I would highly recommend becoming an intern if anyone wants to make a larger impact beyond a days work at one event,” she said. “I was extremely grateful to make it to the event and have an amazing first-event experience.”

We appreciate the hard work and determination that our interns show, making it to events against all odds!

Interested in interning with us? We are looking for interns for our Orlando, Northeast and West Coast locations! Click here to apply now!

Together, we are Feeding Children Everywhere.