What if you could bring hope to families in need? What if, in one action, you could bring hope to your neighbors and those across the globe who desperately need it?
Through your contributions to the Empty Bowls Project, that’s exactly what you did!
Because of the incredible support of the community during this year’s Empty Bowls Project, more money than ever before was raised – more than $16,000 – almost three times as much as last year’s project! And all but ten percent stays right here in Brown County to fight hunger.
Through the donations of the Brown County community, just more than $1,600 was tithed to Food for the Hungry, an international organization that provides hunger relief to the poorest of the poor communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Sam Goff, Food Security and Agriculture Program Coordinator for Food for the Hungry, who offices out of Brownwood, accepted the check on behalf of the organization.
“One of the things that makes this timely and is that we are both faith-based organizations, we both have people from multiple denominations who serve with us and are served by us and we both work with churches, church and community leaders and families,” Goff said.
Food for the Hungry works in communities around the world that are the most vulnerable, the poorest of the poor, taking to heart the adage that if you teach a man to fish he’ll eat for a lifetime.
“Of the 7 billion people living in the world today, around 3 billion of those earn $2 or less per day. Of that, 70 percent are involved in agriculture as their primary means of livelihood”, Goff said.
That’s where Food for the Hungry comes in.
“We begin where the people are,” Goff said. “It makes sense to address agriculture.”
Food for the Hungry’s core program areas include agriculture, health and nutrition, relief development, community capacity building and disaster risk reduction.
Through agriculture, they help farmers to increase production in the land they have available, increase competitiveness in the markets and teach valuable soil and water conservation techniques. Sometimes they do this by introducing new crops to an area like apples in Ethiopia or sesame seed in Mozambique. They teach farmers how to store their crops so they last longer and are available when other’s supplies are long gone. They also teach farmers how to package their items for sale so that it is more marketable.
While it may be easy to overlook something you don’t see every day, the more you learn about the plight of families living in poverty both locally and abroad, the more ways you can find to help.
Goff said part of what he does locally is to “help people open up their hearts to global poverty” and to share with the local church and community the many ways they can help families in the poorest countries living in abject poverty.
Goff and his wife, Brownwood native Kyla Clark Goff, live in Brownwood now and he is available to share the exhaustive efforts of Food for the Hungry with local churches and organizations. For more information on the organization, call Sam Goff at 202-340-4803.
“We are so pleased to be partnering with Food for the Hungry through our Empty Bowls Project,” Angelia Bostick, Executive Director of GSM, said. “Because of the incredible contributions of the Brown County Community, we were able to not only provide food for our friends and neighbors who have fallen on hard times but to affect hunger on a global level as well through our tithe to Food for the Hungry.”
Food for the Hungry has designated the $1,600 gift to the poor and most vulnerable in Burundi. According to a letter from the organization, the donation will be used for a water well in the Bugabira community, north of Burundi and will benefit families – especially children – affected with waterborne diseases.
The letter states that Bugabira is one of the poorest communities in Northern Burundi and Food for the Hungry Burundi runs a child-focused community transformation there.
