It’s been one year since the Christian Aid Ministries food drying program known as Reapers of Hope was opened at 1 Parkview Drive in Moorefield.
Representatives of various groups and churches help to organize the volunteer base.
Imperfect vegetables which are rejected from farmers’ fields and grocery shelves are cleaned and dried at the processing plant, then packed into three-pound bags of soup mix to feed many people around the world.
When mixed with 20 litres of water, a three-pound bag of soup mix provides 90 to 100 servings of nourishing soup.
Recently, after an afternoon of drying and packaging the soup mix, Susan Scheerer and some volunteers from Drayton Christian Reformed Church were asked if some of the bags could be taken to Haiti with a group travelling there to work at a school. Randy Lee would be joining a team formed by Sharon Leis to work at a school at the end of January to construct playground equipment.
The project in Haiti began by helping to get a school started, paying the teachers and building swings and monkey bars.
“When we realized that most of the children were coming to school with empty stomachs we had to turn our attention to providing food for them. We started to look around but didn’t have to look very far, just a few kilometres away in the town of Moorefield was the Reapers of Hope,” said Lee.
Church volunteers told their story. The Reapers of Hope were happy to be able to provide food.
“They generously gave us as many bags of this soup mixture as we wanted. We had to pack them in an extra bag with a ‘humanitarian’ tag so that West Jet would let us take it on board with no charge,” Lee explains.
The bags of soup travelled to the Dominican Republic and then by truck for 14 hours to Cayes-Jacmel, Haiti. They drew up a plan based on serving the food two or three times a week, so that it would last and also to introduce it gradually to the children, who are used to a diet of rice and beans.
“Because we had generous financial support from many people,” said Sharon Leis, the group was able to buy an additional 200 pounds of rice, 50 pounds of beans, 50 pounds of corn, 36 pounds of macaroni, 18 litres of cooking oil, plus a 36-pound donation of high protein rice mix from Hearts of Haiti from Port-au-Prince.
In addition they purchased two large cooking pots with two large spoons, two ladles and two large plastic pails with lids for storage.
These purchases plus the donation from Reapers of Hope provided a total of approximately 550 pounds of food.
“This was a fantastic feat considering the distance and time constraints of this year’s trip,” said Leis.
The Jakdesa Community School Board, teachers and community leaders have laid out a plan to make the food last until the end of May.
“Vegetables which were once wasted go to feed many people around the world,” organizers of the aid trip note.
“The children, who were once malnourished, are now enjoying wholesome foods which will enable them to be stronger, healthier and have the energy to learn better. It’s a win-win situation.”
This article is condensed from the Drayton CRC Connections Newsletter.
