Littleton UMC helps to feed thousands

Littleton United Methodist Church will be feeding more than 10,000 people during a special lunch there on March 29.

Well, sort of.

Actually, the church and any other volunteers from the community will be packaging meals to be supplied to children in developing countries around the world.

The effort is part of a larger work done by an organization called Stop Hunger Now, a Raleigh-based non-profit founded a decade ago to meet nutritional needs of children and families in developing nations.

Rick Kearney, Operation Sharehouse director for the Goldsboro facility, said the organization’s aims are simple: To get nutritionally sound meals into the hands of people who need them. The group does that by joining stateside volunteers with already established groups operating around the world.

“What we do is we get groups, churches, civic groups, schools, any group of people who are interested to do two things,” Kearney said. “We ask them to get volunteers to come in and help package meals, and we get the group to make a donation equal to 20 cents for each meal they package.”

That’s where Littleton United Methodist Church comes in.

Richard Sherman, mission committee chair there, said the church discovered Stop Hunger Now by accident, when some of its members visited a similar packaging effort in Wilson.

“We thought this was such a great project we wanted to bring it here, for the greater Littleton community to take part,” he said. “Littleton United Methodist Church is hosting this, because we have the space to do it, but we want this to be a community project, not just for our church.”

Essentially, the program works like this: Operation Sharehouse, in this case under the direction of Kearney, will bring all the food and needed materials to Littleton. The host organization ­­– in this case, Littleton United Methodist Church ­– supplies volunteers who set up in an assembly line-like operation to package the food for storage and eventual shipment overseas.

The meals are made up of rice, textured soy protein, dehydrated vegetables, and vitamin fortified chicken flavoring mix, all poured into a bag that is then vacuum sealed.

“A bag will feed six people,” Kearney said. “And we can store it for up to five years.”

Sherman said the church has committed to package at least 10,000 meals ­– which means the church will also donate $2,000 to the organization.

“We will be raising money in the community, trying to recruit volunteers,” he said. “We’re committed to at least 10,000 meals and donating $2,000 dollars, but we will do more if we can.”

According to a video presentation by Operation Sharehouse (available on Youtube at http://youtube.com/watch?v=R6AksC3EBOA), 25 people can package 5,000 meals in about two hours ­– enough to feed an orphanage with 32 children for seven months.

“We can work people in shifts,” Sherman said. “If we need to, we can have people working for a few hours in the morning, change to new people in the middle of the day, and have another shift in the afternoon.”

In other words, there is room for everyone to come in and work.

Statewide in 2007, Kearney said the group packaged 3.4 million meals. Some are held in storage to be sent to areas of disaster, when earthquakes or tsunami strike. The rest are sent to various locations to meet ongoing hunger needs.

“The meals are primarily shipped to schools and orphanages,” Kearney said. “We want to focus on getting kids fed and in school. When you put food in schools in Third World countries, attendance go up dramatically.”

“This is a program that gets a lot of bang for your buck,” Sherman said. “We’re feeding people, they are coming to school to get the food, and while they are there, they are getting an education.”

“Where girls attend school, the birthrate is cut in half,” Kearney added. “Literacy rates are higher, the girls are finishing school, having babies later, and their babies are healthier.”

The food is sent in large shipping containers aboard ocean-going vessels, with each container holding 265,120 meals. The next container will be going out to Bolivia, Kearney said.

One strength of the program, he said, is the way it distributes the food, ensuring it gets to the people who need it.

“We don’t do distribution in the countries,” he said. “We supply the food, we use volunteers to package the food, but we establish long-term relationships with an established ministry or organization to distribute the food.”

The shipment to Bolivia, for instance, will be distributed by Save the Children. A recent shipment to Haiti was distributed by a pastor there who manages four orphanages.

“We want to provide the food to people who have already established a presence there, who can get the food to the people who need it, so they can provide a nutritious meal and still continue what they are already doing.

“It’s much ore effective, we feel, to partner with someone who already has something going on,” Kearney explained. “It’s more than just the meal, it’s trying to change someone’s life. You don’t do that with a meal, but you do that with a meal every day, while educating them, teaching them.”

Sherman said he hopes people from the Littleton community will embrace the project, both in donating money and in coming out to work.

He said the church will host a community information meeting to explain more about the program at 10 a.m. on Feb. 23, in the fellowship hall at Littleton United Methodist Church.

For more information, call the church at 586-5385, or visit Stop Hunger Now on the Internet at www.stophungernow.org.