What's In a Number?
I am sure you have heard the quote, “What’s in a name?” Today we want you to know what’s in a number?
Each day we feed 1,000 people at the Grace Center. It is imperative we hit our goals and feed our kiddos! We thought a break down of these stats would be helpful for you, our partners.
· There are 700 plus kids in the school.
· There are about 100 kids in the orphan program who eat lunch at the Grace Center, but attend other schools.
· Plus, we have the Patricia’s Home babies who are not yet in school.
· There are 135 staff members on campus daily.
· There are random people off the streets who are hungry. Not hungry as in wow I could use a candy bar…hungry as in days prior without food.
All together, this adds up to 1,000 people fed daily.
Simple enough right? Let’s keep breaking it down. What does 1,000 people being fed mean logistically:
- Each month we send $500 to help purchase the oil, salt, tomatoes and soap. Additional money is given from the profits of the mill and the textile center, as well as the $1 each that parents give for their kids to attend school.
- Each March, we purchase $15,000 of beans for the year.
- We try to grow as much of our own corn as possible, but in years like this past year when we only harvest a 1/3 of our normal crop, we have to purchase extra corn.
The $20,000 we are raising now is going to purchase that corn.
- The money from children who are sponsored goes to pay for the monthly $500, the beans purchase, the teacher’s salaries, and the food we grow in our fields. We do not have enough children sponsored to cover all the needs, that is why we have this additional need (along with not being able to grow enough of our own corn).
When it is all said and done, we are using money from lots of sources, Americans and Malawians alike come together and form a true partnership to feed hungry mouths.
Giving free handouts can be very dangerous and detrimental to the development of a community, but the School Lunch program enables us to help families during the extremely dangerous hungry season in Malawi without destroying the dignity of the people or creating dependency.
The School Lunch program also helps with logistics at the school (Can you imagine the logistics of feeding 1,000 at your home?):
School lunch enables us to keep the children in school from 7:30 am until 2:00 pm. Kids are well fed, energetic, able to learn, healthy. Our goal in this next year is to see a dramatic decrease in colds and coughs, we believe the good nutrition of two hot meals a day will make this a reality.
To do this, we serve from 3 different kitchens: the primary school kitchen, the preschool kitchen and the anemia feeding program kitchen. Part of our goal this month is to raise money to improve the kitchens and increase our effectiveness in preparing ALL this food!
We know that sometimes a big number like 1,000 feels impersonal and hard to identify with. We hope you see how it is not just a number but 1,000 individuals benefiting greatly from a meal.
If you want to partner with us for the current need to buy corn, donate here:
If you would like to partner with us by signing up as a sponsor, find your sweet child here: