Feed My Starving Children gives Minnesotans a way to help Haiti

Staffers and volunteers pray over a pallet of boxes headed for an unknown destination, perhaps Haiti, at Feed My Starving Children in Eagan, Minn. Monday, Oct. 17, 2016. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)

Staffers and volunteers pray over a pallet of boxes headed for an unknown destination, perhaps Haiti, at Feed My Starving Children in Eagan, Minn. Monday, Oct. 17, 2016. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)

When Junior Obrand arrived last week at a missionary compound in southwest Haiti, people were gathered outside the big, red metal gate calling, “Grangou! Grangou!”

“Which is Creole for ‘hungry,’ ” said Obrand. “They were asking, ‘Can you give us anything, anything at all?’ ”

Obrand, who grew up in Haiti before moving to the Twin Cities eight years ago, coordinates food shipments to the Caribbean for the Twin Cities-based Christian humanitarian organization Feed My Starving Children. He just returned from a trip to Haiti to see what help is needed in the wake of Hurricane Matthew, which hit the island nation earlier this month.

Junior Obrand, coordinator of Caribbean programs at Feed My Starving Children, on a 2015 visit to Haiti. (Photo Courtesy Feed My Starving Children)Junior Obrand, coordinator of Caribbean programs at Feed My Starving Children, on a 2015 visit to Haiti. (Photo Courtesy Feed My Starving Children)The storm blew away not only tin and grass roofs, but sometimes entire houses, Obrand said. Rain and wind ripped out fields of yams, rice and breadfruit. The destruction left a large region of an already poor nation without any locally grown food at all.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen in the weeks to come,” Obrand said. “This is a long-term problem.”

78 MILLION MEALS

Feed My Starving Children intends to help immediately and in the long term. The organization provides fortified rice meals to more than 50 countries worldwide, packed in assembly line fashion by volunteers at sites in Eagan, Coon Rapids, Chanhassen and across the United States. The food is distributed mostly by evangelical Christian missionaries working in various countries through schools, orphanages, clinics and other feeding programs.

Haiti was the organization’s largest recipient, even before Hurricane Matthew, receiving 78 million meals last year, or about a third of the total meals packed. That’s the equivalent of providing lunch for every child in St. Paul Public Schools every weekday during the school year and most of the summer. Now, with the help of volunteers in hairnets, the organization hopes to send countries hit by the hurricane an additional 55 shipping containers filled with a total of 15 million meals before the end of the year, at a cost of about $3 million.

“This is on top of what we’re normally doing,” said Executive Director Mark Crea. “We’d call ourselves a long-term feeding organization. We weren’t in the disaster business. But at the size and scope we are now, like it or not, it’s something we need to do. We have dozens of organizations in Haiti that rely on our food.”

RICE MIX AND VOLUNTEERS

Feed My Starving Children was founded in 1987 by Minnesota businessman Richard Proudfit, who was troubled by seeing malnourished children on a mission trip to Honduras and wondered what could be done. Working with food scientists from Cargill, General Mills and Pillsbury, a team came up with a nutritious mix of rice, soy protein, dried vegetables, vitamins, minerals and a vegetarian chicken flavoring — something that would be palatable and acceptable to cultures around the globe and easy to prepare with boiled water.

Volunteers packed the first major shipment for a pediatric hospital in Rwanda. Today, the organization uses the same volunteer model, though it also has a staff of over 200 people. It distributes essentially the same rice mix, which costs about 22 cents per serving. It runs the three permanent sites in Minnesota, three in Chicago and one in Phoenix. In 2005, it hosted its first packing event out of the state at a Christian youth conference in Kansas City. This year, it will hold 250 mobile events across the country, which involves trucking ingredients, bags, funnels, scales and everything else needed to pack meals.

Crea, who was hired in 2004 and has overseen 50 percent annual growth, attributes Feed My Starving Children’s success to its decision to embrace its Christian identity and stay focused on what it does best — mobilizing volunteers and packing food. It doesn’t give food directly to hungry people.

“We find organizations and missionaries that are embedded in these countries and that are the very best in these counties, and we give our food to them,” said Crea.

MANNA FROM EAGAN

Feed My Starving Children in Eagan runs five shifts, six days a week. Evening shifts usually fill with 140 people, said Eagan manager Erin Arndt, drawing church groups, youth organizations, sports teams, corporate service projects and retirees from across the metro. And she’s ramping up production to squeeze out more meals for Haiti.

During a weekday morning, adults in hairnets gathered around a table scooped soy and weighed rice to upbeat music in a room lined with huge mural photographs of children eating rice from metal bowls. The volunteers included college students on break and a half dozen women whose husbands are part of a south suburban classic car club. They stacked the sealed plastic bags in cardboard boxes labeled “MannaPack,” after the Biblical food that fell from heaven.

Meals packed by volunteers with Twin Cities-based Feed My Starving Children have been feeding Haitians in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. In Oct. 2016, the Texas-based mission group Mission of Hope moved thousands of boxes of MannaPack rice from storehouses in Port au Prince to distribute in the hard-hit southwest part of the island. (Photo Courtesy Mission of Hope)Meals packed by volunteers with Twin Cities-based Feed My Starving Children have been feeding Haitians in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. In Oct. 2016, the Texas-based mission group Mission of Hope moved thousands of boxes of MannaPack rice from storehouses in Port au Prince to distribute in the hard-hit southwest part of the island. (Photo Courtesy Mission of Hope)“I love packing, regardless of where the food is going. It’s a blast,” said Anna Heruth of Woodbury, a junior at Northwestern College in St. Paul who recently celebrated her 21st birthday packing food with friends. “But when Hurricane Matthew hit and I saw the picture on Facebook of the empty warehouse, I knew I had to help.”

Heruth, who visited Haiti as a teenager through a church group, brought her mother, Alison Heruth. “It’s always hard to make the time,” said her mom. “But then you feel so good when you do this.”

In the back of the Eagan warehouse, eight long rows of stacked boxes were destined for different countries, including Iraq, Nicaragua and the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. One container had already left that morning for Thailand. A second 40-foot container was getting loaded for Haiti, the first of several disaster relief containers requested by Cross International, a Christian humanitarian organization based in Pompano Beach, Fla. When it was full, the staff gathered in a circle at the loading dock door and prayed, as they do over every shipment.

“Dear Heavenly Father,” Arndt said, as everyone bowed their heads. “We ask you to keep this driver safe as he makes his way down to Florida. We ask you to keep this food safe as it goes to Haiti. … Amen.”

HUNGER AS HOPELESSNESS

Haitians were going hungry long before Hurricane Matthew. The country produces only about half the food it consumes, following a decline in agricultural productivity from environmental degradation, hurricanes, earthquake, drought and, according to some experts, imports of cheap rice from the United States that undermined Haitian farming. Three quarters of the population lives on less than $2 per day, making it the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

“It’s hard to explain what food really means for people if you don’t live day by day asking where your next meal is coming from,” said Obrand, who grew up with nine siblings. “Hunger to me is the combination of an empty stomach and hopelessness.”

Volunteers Alison Heruth of Woodbury, left, and Megan Jelinski of Apple Valley pack bags of rice, soy, dehydrated vegetables and vitamins at Feed My Starving Children in Eagan, Minn. Monday, Oct. 17, 2016. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)Volunteers Alison Heruth of Woodbury, left, and Megan Jelinski of Apple Valley pack bags of rice, soy, dehydrated vegetables and vitamins at Feed My Starving Children in Eagan, Minn. Monday, Oct. 17, 2016. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)Most of the meals packed by Feed My Starving Children are served through Christian schools, said Obrand, who believes education is the only way Haiti will pull itself out of poverty. Regular meals encourage parents to send their children to school, he said. One of their largest partners is the evangelical missionary organization Love a Child, based in Fort Myers, Fla., which last year received more than 20 million meals.

“It’s a baseline help that’s absolutely essential,” said Rad Hazelip, Love a Child’s assistant executive director. Love a Child runs an orphanage as well as schools, clinics and a garden project. The garden project helps Haitians grow food to eat and sell, including okra, eggplant, tomatoes, sweet potatoes and other foods. “If you didn’t have the food, you couldn’t launch your other outreach programs. We wouldn’t be able to have the scope of humanitarian aid we have without Feed My Starving Children.”

In the wake of the hurricane, Love a Child and the many other partners in Haiti have been emptying their warehouses and giving food to hurricane victims.

“More than 80 percent of those gardens were destroyed,” said Hazelip, speaking from Fort Myers. “So food is going to be scarce for a couple seasons. Housing is gone. Clothes are gone. The big threat now is starvation and cholera.”

During Obrand’s five days in Haiti, he saw plenty of devastation, but also signs of hope. The missionary compound with the red gate, Reciprocal Ministries International in Les Cayes, was sending out food on trucks into the countryside.

Obrand also met a 19-year-old Haitian man named Jonathan who showed up in Les Cayes wearing a pink Madonna T-shirt and carrying a clipboard where he’d noted the names of everyone in his village who needed help. Obrand and a couple missionaries drove 45 boxes of MannaPack rice to the village.

“It may not seem (like) a lot, but the joy I seen in people’s faces was incredible,” said Obrand. “They looked at me and said, ‘Who sent you here?’ The people had both hands in the air and were saying, ‘Mesi Jezi, Mesi Jezi,’ which means ‘Thank you, Jesus’ in Creole.

“When I meet the people who get this food, I tell them every single time, this food is packed by volunteers,” Obrand added. “But people don’t get that. There isn’t a word for volunteers in Creole. So I tell them, ‘It’s packed by people who don’t get paid. They do it for love.’ “

Share:

Author: `