Locals witness need for 'Feel the Hunger Day'
A girl tries on the sunglasses of Stephanie Hiatt of Sagle, while Linda Schofield of Sandpoint holds a boy in her lap Nov. 8 in the playground of the church in Jacmel, Haiti. Including Chip and Thoretta Short, nine people from the area representing three churches, Assembly of God, Cedar Hills Church and First Christian, recently traveled to Haiti to volunteer for the Restoration Ministries feeding program. (Courtesy photo)
Editor’s note: This is the second of three stories about a local initiative, Feel the Hunger Day, to raise awareness of world hunger.
SANDPOINT — With “Feel the Hunger Day” fast approaching, many people in Sandpoint are preparing to eat just half a cup of rice during the whole day on Dec. 8, to experience the hunger that around 1 billion people in the world face every day. Local pastor Eric Rust, who first came up with the idea, hopes that in raising awareness of hunger issues, the initiative will inspire people to do something to help.
Sandpoint residents Chip and Thoretta Short, who have served with disaster relief organization Forward Edge International in several countries, believe that such an initiative as Feel the Hunger Day is important to help us to understand the challenges faced by people in Third World countries.
“I thought I had a good understanding of issues like homelessness and hunger, but that was before we went to help at an orphanage in Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, this spring,” said Thoretta Short. “The overwhelming feeling I had was that these people had nothing, but they still had so much grace and appreciation for what we were doing.”
Inspired by their trip to Nicaragua, the Shorts then traveled to Haiti in early November, to help with the international aid effort to rebuild the country’s infrastructure following the devastating earthquake that hit in January this year.
“The most humbling part of our trip was working in a children’s feeding and education program that a local ministry, Restoration Ministries, has been providing for many years, even before the earthquake,” said Chip Short.
The program feeds 300 children aged 2 to 14 each day and is run from a church that was damaged first by the earthquake and then by Hurricane Tomas, which battered Haiti in the days before the Shorts arrived in the country. The program is funded by a sponsorship scheme; American families can sponsor a child for $32 a month, which provides that child with one meal five days a week, and the chance to get an education — an invaluable opportunity in a country with a reported 80 to 90 percent unemployment rate.
“The pastor of Restoration Ministries told us that missionaries had been going to Haiti for the past 200 years, bringing supplies to the country, but this created a kind of begging mentality,” said Thoretta Short. “Forward Edge International doesn’t do handouts; it provides education. Its goal in Haiti is to train up a whole village to start again, to start Haiti again.”
The poorest country in the Americas, Haiti is still reeling from the effects of the Jan. 12 earthquake that left an estimated 230,000 people dead and 1.6 million homeless, according to reports from the BBC and CNN. The quake also destroyed trees and other valuable resources, leaving the people of Haiti to face hunger, poverty and homelessness — issues that are hard for Americans to even contemplate.
“Kids in Haiti just accept that they have to find their own food,” said Thoretta Short. “The children in the feeding program never complained. Once they arrived, they waited in line, washed their hands, took a vitamin and recited a psalm, all before they actually ate. They were so patient — no one tried to sneak a bite and there was no fighting.”
Having personally witnessed the need for a day like Feel the Hunger, the Shorts are both excited about the initiative.
“The ‘half cup of rice’ idea is very accurate, as the children we saw in Haiti would eat one scoop of rice per day,” said Thoretta Short, who knew hunger herself as a child. “I was raised in a poor family, but when we got hungry there were food stamps, or we could ask our neighbors for help,” she said. “In Third World countries there are no food stamps, and the neighbors can’t help. Everyone is in survival mode. These people rely on help from other countries like America — they wouldn’t be able to survive without it.”
Sponsoring a child through an organization such as Forward Edge International is a great way to help in the fight against hunger, and sponsorships start at just $30 a month. To find out more, visit www.forwardedge.org/childsponsorship.
Meantime, the support for Feel the Hunger Day is growing — more people in Sandpoint (and farther afield!) are signing up every day. To find out more about Feel the Hunger Day, and to join the growing number of people preparing to eat just half a cup of rice on Dec. 8, visit www.feelthehunger.org.