Please take the time to share this post with any students you may know who are helping in the fight to end hunger. The email reprinted below details how Sodexo is again offering $5,000 scholarships to both students and the hunger organizations with which they volunteer.

The deadline is Februrary 26^th, so please spread the word. This is a wonderful opportunity to encourage more students to get involved in the fight to eradicate hunger in our lifetime.

Hello fellow members of the Alliance to End Hunger,

 Most of you know that for several years Sodexo has been offering $5,000 scholarships to students who are doing great things to fight hunger in America.  We also provide a matching $5,000 grant to the hunger organization that they are working with. This is open to all students from kindergarten through graduate school. 

 The deadline for application is February 26th.  I’m sure that all students could use a little extra money these days, and I know that hunger organizations can as well.  More information about the program and how to apply can be found at www.SodexoFoundation.org. 

 If you have children, know children, or know of someone who has children, please share this information with as many people as you can. 

 If you have questions or need more information, please don’t hesitate to call me directly at 301 987 4430 or to connect via email:  steve.brady@sodexo.com.

 Kind regards,

Steve Brady

Stephen J Brady

SVP Corporate Communications

North America

T: 301 987 4430

F: 301 987 4439

steve.brady@sodexo.com

I am currently in Tampa, Florida coordinating a wonderful partnership between the Haitian community of the greater Tampa/St. Petersburg/Clearwater area. Over 15 Caribbean and Haitian organizations are actively working together to help in Haiti after the disaster. And they have chosen Stop Hunger Now as one of the three agencies to recieve the funds they are collecting.

This is both an honor and a great responsibility. SHN was chosen because we have been working in Haiti for over twelve years. We have a track record of significant accomplishment in a country where that is never easy to achieve. We have also demonstrated that we have the necessaary knowledge to use donated resources wisely and to best effect.

I am reminded of something Martin Buber once said. We have to respond with action in a crisis. But the action must be informed action. And that is what SHN is able to provide in this crisis, action rooted in a knowledge gained by experience.

The greater the crisis becomes, the more earnest and consciously responsible is the knowledge demanded of us; for although what is demanded is a deed, only the deed which is born of knowledge will help overcome the crisis.  

This knowledge is what allows our many partners to have the assurance that funds donated to us will be used wisely and effeciently to achieve the greatest good. They recognize that SHN gets the job done. It is something we can all take pride in accomplishing.

To be human is to be hungry. All children are hungry. They are born hungry. Most children are always hungry. Some children are starving. It is terifying to see a starving child. It is more terrifying to be a starving child. Starvation is horrible. To be without food is hell.

So writes Martin Bell in his wonderful little book, The Way of the Wolf. Until you have seen a starving child, or have listened to the wailing of a grieving mother whose child has just succumbed to starvation, no words can truly convey the reality of Martin Bell’s words.

Stop Hunger Now has a vision of a world where such sights and sounds are just distant memories. We know that by all of us working together we can erase the obscenity of hunger in our lifetime. Please help.

One of the most desperate and immediate needs in Haiti is food. This is a need that was present before the earthquake. And it is one that will only grow in the weeks and months to follow.

Stop Hunger Now will continue to provide high protien meals to the hungry in Haiti. Your help is critical in making that possible. Your gifts of time and money is saving lives in Haiti. You are feeding hungry Haitian children. Thank you for caring. Thank you for keeping hell at bay.

Earlier today I sent out a post highlighting the power of our ongoing partnerships in respondinding to the tragic earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. This email from Lee Warren (who just returned from a week in Haiti), is another beautiful illustration of what happens when all of us work together.

Stop Hunger Now hosted a meal packaging event Episcopal Diocese in Memphis, TN. The meals were sent to Haiti. The email below describes how some of those meals are now being used.

The food Memphis packaged was initially packaged for St. Vincent’s School for Handicapped Children and school children in Montrouis. Plans changed following the quake. The food was stored at the Episcopal college. An American Episcopal priest reported this:

 St. Vincent’s is destroyed, no matter what you hear. I do think that is reality. The boy’s foyer is destroyed as well. No one knows the exact number of children who died. Sadoni thinks 6-10 at the main facility and maybe 4 at the foyer. The numbers “move” all the time! To my knowledge, no adults lost their lives there. The food sent earlier was a Godsend. It was stored in the depot on the College St. Pierre campus where everyone ended up. It has been used and appreciated (Pere Sadoni wanted me to tell you that).

Our work in Haiti has been ongoing for the past twelve years. We have seen and responded to far too many natural disasters in this impoverished and battered nation. None, however, has matched the scope of the recent earthquake.

We will continue to work in Haiti, reaching out to meet the most basic needs of our family in the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere. The tragedy has never been more heart-wrenching and the need has never beeen greater.

The following exceprt from a Skype conversation between two of our partners is a good illustration of the impact our high protein meals are making. Blanchard is a school near Citi Soleil where Stop Hunger Now has been working for the past three years to feed the primary school students.

MOH [Mission of Hope] has been coming to Blanchard with more food (100 SHN boxes each day) and a med team. So, in addition to the 31,000 meals passed out on Sunday, 2 days of 100 boxes = 36 x 200 x 6 = 43,200 meals. Dieu merci for SHN and the partnership we have had – it is a Godsend for the Haitians.

On behalf of the thousands of Haitian earthquake survivors who have food because you cared enough to package meals, I offer you my sincere and humble thanks. Working together we are saving lives. Working together we are providing hope. Working together we are healing our broken world and reaching toward a world without hunger. Dieu merci for each of you.

The tragedy in Haiti continues to unfold and the world hears the desperate need that country has for more food. Stop Hunger Now is working around the clock to get food, water and medicines into the areas of need.

I will continue to monitor the Haitian disaster and provide updates. But this morning I want to bring another story to your attention. The story by Lester Brown which follows is another piece that describes the connection between growing hunger, our over-consumptive lifestyles and bad political decisions.

The undenialbe relationship between using food for fuel and growing hunger strikes at our true moral values. Having cheap gas for our cars is more important to us than keeping children from dying of hunger. Face it. It is who we are.

U.S. Feeds One Quarter Of Its Grain To Cars While Hunger Is On The Rise

by Lester Brown, Washington, D.C on 01.22.10

Cars & Transportation

Buzz up!

The 107 million tons of grain that went to U.S. ethanol distilleries in 2009 was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption levels. More than a quarter of the total U.S. grain crop was turned into ethanol to fuel cars last year. With 200 ethanol distilleries in the country set up to transform food into fuel, the amount of grain processed has tripled since 2004.

The United States looms large in the world food economy: it is far and away the world's leading grain exporter, exporting more than Argentina, Australia, Canada, and Russia combined. In a globalized food economy, increased demand for food to fuel American vehicles puts additional pressure on world food supplies.

From an agricultural vantage point, the automotive hunger for crop-based fuels is insatiable. The Earth Policy Institute has noted that even if the entire U.S. grain crop were converted to ethanol (leaving no domestic crop to make bread, rice, pasta, or feed the animals from which we get meat, milk, and eggs), it would satisfy at most 18 percent of U.S. automotive fuel needs.

When the growing demand for corn for ethanol helped to push world grain prices to record highs between late 2006 and 2008, people in low-income grain-importing countries were hit the hardest. The unprecedented spike in food prices drove up the number of hungry people in the world to over 1 billion for the first time in 2009. Though the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression has recently brought food prices down from their peak, they still remain well above their long-term average levels.

The amount of grain needed to fill the tank of an SUV with ethanol just once can feed one person for an entire year. The average income of the owners of the world's 940 million automobiles is at least ten times larger than that of the world's 2 billion hungriest people. In the competition between cars and hungry people for the world's harvest, the car is destined to win.

Continuing to divert more food to fuel, as is now mandated by the U.S. federal government in its Renewable Fuel Standard, will likely only reinforce the disturbing rise in hunger. By subsidizing the production of ethanol, now to the tune of some $6 billion each year, U.S. taxpayers are in effect subsidizing rising food bills at home and around the world.

The email copied below is Lee Warren’s third email. I mistakenly posted her fourth email as her third.

The first day at the clinic is over and the sun is setting. We are tired, more from the very rough drive to and from the clinic than from seeing all the many patients. Fortunately we passed road graders coming back in but to hope that the road would be leveled before we leave is just that – hope.

Everything takes time in Haiti.

We saw a few patients who had been brought in from PAP, but mostly we were seeing the members of the community, some with severe malnutrition, but mostly urgent care cases. The clinic has a clever system to help those patients who are undernourished. The ministry provided 4 women with micro-credits loan so they could become food vendors at the clinic. Patients are given tongue depressors when they leave which they exchange for a meal from the vendor of their choice. Throughout the day someone goes out and gives each vendor a dollar and buys back their tongue depressor. By doing so the clinic is funding cooks to provide meals for those in most need of a meal. Some patients receive several depressors. Many patients receive full fat milk powder and a type of meal they can prepare at home.

As one of the non-medical team members, I took vitals or counted meds all day. I am also the group photographer.

There was no ice at the hotel when we returned, but the shower always feel amazing! As does helping these precious people.

Until tomorrow,

Lee

The latest email from Lee Warren, our Stop Hunger Now staff person on the ground in Haiti. Please keep her and the entire team in prayer.

Dear Family and Friends,

 

   Today was exhausting, especially for the dental team and physicians, but we are all rather weary.  Once again, the day starts and ends with a rough 1.5 hr. Drive. The clinic was overwhelmed with emergency patients that had arrived from Port-au-Prince. We saw such severe wounds as well as severe malnutrition. Today I took my suitcase of Stop Hunger Now meals that the members of South Hill Presbyterian Church had packaged and the doctors were so happy to give it out to the most severe cases. I’ll be so happy to share the pictures with those who get up once a month and package food at the church.

  

 

   Love to all.  As we say in the south, this body is “rode hard and hung up wet.”  But it’s a very, very good kind of tired.