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“Ending Hunger is Not An Option” – Stop Hunger Now
Stop Hunger Now is now beginning its tenth year of working to end the scourge of hunger and malnutrition. This Raleigh-based, international relief organization has already worked to distribute over $100 million worth of emergency food, medicine and life-saving supplies in over 55 countries. Last year witnessed the birth of their newest effort, Operation Sharehouse.
A volunteer-driven program, Operation Sharehouse provides the opportunity for people of all ages to come together to package nutritious meals for the world’s hungry. The meals are dehydrated and high-protein with only four ingredients, all of which are put together by the volunteers. The four ingredients are rice, textured soy, dehydrated vegetables and a chicken-flavored vitamin mix. When completed, each meal costs only twenty cents.
The meals are packaged six to a bag and heat sealed. Once packaged the meals have a shelf life of three to five years. The long shelf life makes them perfect for school feeding programs and for use in orphanages around the world.
In its first year Operation Sharehouse had over 5,200 volunteers come together to package over 1,800,000 nutritious meals for the hungry. Meals have already been sent to Haiti, Belize, Nicaragua, Mexico and Kenya. Shipments are in process for Palestine, Ghana, Bolivia, Guatemala and Liberia.
“It was a fantastic start,” said the Rev. Ray Buchanan, Founder and President of Stop Hunger Now. “But, it is not enough. We cannot be satisfied. Stop Hunger Now can do more to end hunger in our lifetime. We all can do more. We all must do more.”
Buchanan is adamant about the need for Christians to respond to the cries of the hungry. “Ending hunger in our lifetime is the greatest moral issue of our age. THIRTY THOUSAND OF OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS DIE EVERY DAY from hunger related causes,” Buchanan stated. “That’s 1,250 people every hour, 20 people every minute, 1 person dying from hunger every three seconds. Basic morality and common decency both demand we do whatever it takes to end such an unnecessary obscenity. Spirituality must remain both shallow and suspect without meeting the needs of the hungry. As Pope John II so eloquently put it, we need a ‘vast moral mobilization of public opinion’ to stop allowing people to starve in a world with an abundance of food.”
Stop Hunger Now has a vision of a world without hunger. The key to achieving that vision according to Buchanan is working together. It is working together that makes the vision is possible. People of faith and compassion must join together until hunger is no longer tolerated. People must work together until hunger is only a memory. If every person of faith would do what they were able, hunger could be eradicated in our lifetime says Buchanan.
Tolerating hunger must be an anathema to all people of faith, all people of conscience and all people of reason. Ending hunger for Buchanan is about the reality of our Christian commitment and determines the depth of our discipleship. Hunger in a world of plenty is a reflection of our lack of community and a compromised faithfulness.
In 2007, the goal of Stop Hunger Now is simple. They intend to more than double the nutritious meals they package for the hungry and to encourage thousands more volunteers to get involved in the fight to erase the obscenity of hunger. They want to get every United Methodist Church in North Carolina to become an active center for achieving a world where no child has to endure the pain of an empty stomach, and where no mother has to suffer the agony of watching a beloved child waste away before her eyes.
Buchanan says that Operation Sharehouse is the perfect project to help congregations become more active in fighting hunger. It is a simple, hands-on project for all ages that allows families to work together on behalf of the “least of these” among us.
Operation Sharehouse even has a mobile unit which allows congregations to plan packaging events at their own locations. If a Church wants to help feed the world’s hungry, this is a perfect way to do it.
For more information on Operation Sharehouse and the other programs of Stop Hunger Now, visit their website www.StopHungerNow.org, or give them a call at 919/839-0689 or toll-free 888/501-8440.
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