Monday, November 08, 2010
 
sponsored by

Community helps prepare foods for shipment to Haiti

Send a link to a friend

[November 08, 2010]  The tiny country of Haiti is located on Hispaniola Island. Haiti shares the island with the Dominican Republic and is located south of the Florida gulf in the vicinity of Jamaica and Cuba.

In January a 7.0-magnitude earthquake affected 3,000,000 Haitian residents. The government estimated 230,000 lives lost, 300,000 injured and approximately 1,000,000 made homeless as a result of the quake.


These youngsters are just two of several dozen volunteers, young and old alike, who did something truly remarkable Saturday: They saved the life of a child in Haiti. They did so by donating an hour of their time to packaging highly nutritional dehydrated meals that will be shipped directly to Port-au-Prince via International Disaster Emergency Service and Kids Against Hunger

HardwareAs news of this event reached the media outlets, Lincolnite Leslie Starasta was touched by the suffering in the tiny country and felt compelled to do something to help.

"I was hearing about all this and thinking, 'What can we do?' The first thought was, 'Write a check,' but I wanted to get more involved. I went to the IDES website and found that they were just starting to work with Kids Against Hunger on this food packaging program," she said.

The International Disaster Emergency Service organization out of Kempton, Ind., was well known to Starasta because of her church's work with the Harvest of Talents, which contributes to the organization.

Through the IDES website, she learned about the Kids Against Hunger food packaging program and found that there was to be a packing event taking place in Indiana that would directly affect lives in Haiti.

Kids Against Hunger is a national organization out of Minnesota that has worked for over 30 years to provide food supplies to undernourished children throughout the world.

In recent years, the organization has come up with a breakthrough product that provides all the daily nutritional requirements for a child in one simple serving.

Seeking the help of a team of food scientists from Cargill, General Mills, Archer Daniels Midland and Pillsbury, a formulation was created using long white rice, soy protein, dehydrated vegetables and a chicken-flavored nutritional supplement. The product is packaged in airtight pouches and contains enough ingredients for six child-size servings.

Starasta explained that because the food is shipped worldwide to people of various ethnicities and religious beliefs, no animal products used in the formulation.

She also brought this relief effort a little closer to home when she commented on the involvement of Archer Daniels Midland in the formulation.

"I find it particularly fascinating that they partnered with ADM to create the crushed soy protein that is used," she said. "It is quite possible the soybeans we grew here in Logan County and sent to ADM for processing are being used in the Kids Against Hunger meals that are packed throughout the United States in addition to Lincoln, Ill."

Kids Against Hunger uses volunteers to mix the ingredients, fill and seal the pouches, and pack them into cartons of 36 each. By using volunteer labor, the cost of one food pouch is only about $1.25. For the cash donor this means that more of the money being given is going directly to those in need.

The Starasta family made the trip to Indiana and spent a day working on food packaging. Starasta said it was a great day for her family and a memorable one for her kids.

When they returned to Lincoln, she took the idea of doing a packaging locally to the Harvest of Talents team at the Lincoln Christian Church, where she is a member. The team agreed that it would be a worthwhile project for the community, so Starasta set out to get it all organized, and Saturday saw the culmination of her efforts.

The event began at 9:45 Saturday morning when the first shift arrived, prepared to pack food.

Ryan Chapman of IDES had driven from Indiana in a truck filled with all the individual ingredients, packaging materials and equipment that would be needed for the day, and he acted as the overseer for the group activity.

The day was divided into one-hour shifts and volunteers were asked to spend just that one hour of their day working, but several stayed longer.

[to top of second column]

The first shift of the day included students from Lincoln Community High School, Lincoln College, Lincoln Christian University, youth from Lincoln Christian Church and several adults who came with their kids or were a part of the church.

Starasta said that others who had committed to coming and working a shift later in the day included area Boy and Girl Scout troops and several other groups as well.

Starasta said the packaging process does need some adult participation, but it is also very kid-friendly.

The process involves putting a pouch on the bottom of a special funnel, then measuring out the protein, flavoring, rice and vegetables and dumping them into the pouch. It is then weighed and rice is added to or taken away from the pouch until it comes to the proper weight. It is then sealed with an electric food-saver type of machine that melts the edges of the bags together to form an airtight seal and is placed in a cardboard carton for shipping.

The protein, vitamin and mineral supplement needs to be measured carefully, so adults and older youth take care of that, while the dried vegetables and rice can be added by the younger ones because less precision is required. Adults seal the bags, but the kids help build the shipping cartons and then fill them with the finished pouches.

As the first shift of the day came to an end, Chapman asked everyone to gather for a group picture and then prayer. He then offered a cooked sample of the product they had just packaged.

Gathered around the table of food, some commented that the dish looked similar to a chicken and rice casserole, and those who took a bite said it was quite tasty.

At the end of the day, Chapman's truck would be reloaded with the finished product, taken back to Indiana, prepared for shipping and sent off as soon as possible to Haiti.

Chapman said that the IDES and Kids Against Hunger organizations have been blessed in Haiti as they have had no difficulty getting the food product into the country.

When a natural disaster occurs, one of the biggest obstacles to relief organizations in taking action is getting their offerings past customs. Chapman noted that in Haiti even the United Nations was turned away for a time.

IDES and Kids Against Hunger work directly with multiple missionary teams in Haiti and have two docks in Port-au-Prince reserved just for them, which means that what was done in Lincoln on Saturday will soon have a positive effect on the children of Haiti.

Starasta had said the goal for the day was to produce 3,000 pouches, which would equate to 18,000 meals. At the end of the first shift they were well on their way, as Chapman announced the first hour had produced over 4,000 servings.

To learn more about IDES and Kids Against Hunger, visit the websites below:

[By NILA SMITH]

Library

< Top Stories index

Back to top


 

News | Sports | Business | Rural Review | Teaching and Learning | Home and Family | Tourism | Obituaries

Community | Perspectives | Law and Courts | Leisure Time | Spiritual Life | Health and Fitness | Teen Scene
Calendar | Letters to the Editor