Baptist Global Response

By June Lucas

SKOPJE, Macedonia – Roma children commonly watch from the public school yard as their classmates purchase snacks during the lunch hour. Many of the Roma children will wait several more hours for their single meal of the day – which most likely will consist mainly of bread.

The Roma are among the poorest people in Europe. In Macedonia, the unemployment rate among the nearly 200,000 Roma is around 80 percent. Children from these families commonly suffer malnutrition, evident in anemia, hair loss, loss of skin color, and increasing occurrence of tuberculosis. Bread, which is both inexpensive and filling, makes up the bulk of their diet, but it does not provide the protein and many of the vitamins the children need.

A lunch program, supported by Southern Baptists through their World Hunger Fund, helps fill the rumbling stomachs of nearly 400 Roma schoolchildren each day.

The meal program, modeled on the Headstart program in the United States, was identified as a way to counter the effects of hunger on Roma schoolchildren. Children who are hungry throughout the school day also suffer from lack of concentration and attention span and decreased retention of material. Through the initiative, conducted in partnership with Baptist Global Response, 400 Roma children were provided three meals a week, consisting of milk, an egg, bread and chocolate-covered raisins or peanuts.

The lunches are served in two education centers that help prepare Roma children for school and assist them with homework once they begin school. One center serves about 300 children daily in Topana, the oldest Roma community in Macedonia’s capital, Skopje. The other center, located in Shutka, the largest of Skopje’s Roma communities, hosts 75 to 100 children a day.

Field partners working with the project are going to be able to literally measure the impact of the program.

“One of the things we are doing in conjunction with this project is compiling statistics of various physical measurements – height, weight, arm measurements, general physical health – as well as looking at scholastic results,” project director Betty Easter said. She explained the measurements were taken at the start of the project in March, again in June and in September, and also will be taken at the end of the meal program. A report detailing the impact of the project will be written from those measurements.

Emily Harrison, who also helps with the project, said some Roma children initially resisted the meal.

“It took a little while for the children to warm up to us,” Harrison said. “There were many days in the beginning where the more prideful ones refused to eat. But after some time, they began to show a little more gratitude and desire to be there.”

Harrison said Igber, an older woman from the community, helped facilitate a friendlier relationship between the Roma children and the field partners involved in the project. Igber played music for the children and encouraged them to dance before the meal, and her storytelling kept the children quiet as they ate.

The meals have opened up relationships that extend into the larger Roma community.

“I love serving these kids,” Harrison said. “My favorite job is handing them their dessert on the way out. Usually it’s a piece of fruit, but getting to look each one in the face and say ‘Bye’ or ‘Have a great day’ or ‘See you later’ is so fun.

“After about a month of it last semester, I started to notice the kids would look me in the face right back …. Now it has grown to be where they will yell my name and chase me down in the street to say ‘Hi.’ Oftentimes when I am stopped, talking to a child or two, their parent will cross our path and invite me into their home.”

The initiative is an excellent example of the way Southern Baptist gifts to their World Hunger Fund open the door for disadvantaged children to discover lives of meaning and purpose, said Jim Brown, U.S. director for Baptist Global response.

“Every dollar given to the World Hunger Fund is used solely for ministry purposes, because Southern Baptists cover administrative costs through other giving channels,” Brown said. “Through ministries like this meal program, children in need experience the love of God for themselves – because people who care are willing to give.”

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June Lucas is a collegiate correspondent for Baptist Global Response. For information on giving to the World Hunger Fund, please visit the BGR Giving page.

In this new video, residents of Kenya’s Rift Valley say ‘Thank you’ for generous gifts to the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund that made a life-saving relief effort possible.

To give to the World Hunger Fund, click here. For resources to help you promote World Hunger Sunday Oct. 11, click here.

A key ministry partner has posted this brief video to communicate the urgency of the hunger problem in Kenya and the critical role played by gifts to the Southern Baptist World Hnger Fund. Every dollar given to the WHF is used 100% for on-the-field ministry. World Hunger Sunday is Oct. 11.

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Hunger is a very real problem all through the drought stricken Rift Valley region of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Thanks to the generous gifts of Southern Baptists to the World Hunger Fund, Southern Baptists are able to plan hunger relief projects to help alleviate some of the suffering. God is blessing these efforts. Pray for good rains this next season. Pray for God to strengthen workers in these food distribution efforts. Pray for opportunities to share not only physical food but spiritual food as well.

World Hunger Sunday is just around the corner: Oct. 11. With the burgeoning hunger crisis in Kenya, the need for compassionate giving is great. Will you mobilize your church to help? Resources for observing World Hunger Sunday are available here.

NAKURU, Kenya – Starvation continues to stalk millions of Maasai people in Kenya’s Rift valley, and Southern Baptists are launching a new round of hunger relief to help the neediest survive.

Almost a third of the people in Kenya’s Kajiado and Narok districts are in dire need of food, and the new round of relief efforts will stave off disaster for about 180,000 people, according to the Southern Baptist missionary coordinating the project.

Read more here

ATHENS – Baptists in a Middle Eastern country are partnering with Southern Baptists to give their neighbors, as the old saying goes, “a hand up, not just a handout.”

In 2007, believers in the country brought their neighbors’ plight to the attention of Southern Baptist humanitarian workers in the region, and together they developed a strategy that would meet short-term needs while helping parents develop skills to better provide for their families over the long term.

Residents of the area struggle to survive, earning only about 40 percent of their country’s normal standard of living. On a day-to-day basis, they can not afford necessities like food, medicine and heat for their homes; their long-term prospects are clouded by the scarcity of jobs and their lack of training. Because the country predominantly follows another world religion, Christians find themselves faced with significant obstacles in reaching out to people in need.

In consultation with Abraham Shepherd, who with his wife, Grace, directs Baptist Global Response work in the Middle East, local Baptists and the Southern Baptist humanitarian workers developed a two-pronged strategy. To meet immediate needs, they provided packets of food – including sugar, rice, oil, eggs, milk, tea, and pasta – essential medicines, heaters and blankets the families could not afford. They also designed a program to train locals in skills that would enable them to improve their standard of living and help them provide better for their families.

The long-term strategy included both educational centers where literacy courses, English classes and computer training are offered. Individuals also were taught how to develop their own businesses. In the component of the program that ran between January and April 2009, an estimated 800 people were helped at a cost of $31.25 each from resources provided by Southern Baptists who gave to their World Hunger Fund.

Another benefit of the program is that while local Baptists were helping their neighbors, they also were developing their own leadership and serving skills. Because relationships are so important in the local culture, local Baptists were able to break down barriers by demonstrating God’s love for their neighbors.

“The object of this project is to work through local believers to reach the poor of this nation,” said the project director. “Our desire is for local believers to have a passion for their neighbors’ needs and be able to reach out in love. As the local believers get involved in sharing, they will be encouraged by seeing what God is doing and what great things he can do.”

Even a small gift to the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund sets in motion a ripple effect that touches lives for generations to come, Shepherd said.

“By their generous giving to the World Hunger Fund, Southern Baptists trigger a chain reaction of caring that reaches across oceans,” Shepherd said. “It touches people in need and shapes national believers in the lesson of generosity and giving to their neighbors in need.”

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For more information about giving through the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund, please visit the BGR Giving page.

Southern Baptists continue to provide urgently needed assistance to families suffering in Zimbabwe’s unprecedented economic catastrophe. As of December 2008, the inflation rate was estimated at an unfathomable 516 quintillion percent — the highest ever recorded. The only goods available in stores are priced in foreign currency that ordinary citizens do not have. Those who do have some money in the bank are limited to withdrawals too small to purchase food.

A new phase of food distribution was launched in mid-March, sending 45-pound boxes of staple items to 5,000 of Zimbabwe’s neediest families.  Each box includes food staples like rice, oil, salt, powdered milk, corned beef, beans, etc., to help families stave off starvation.

This next week, enough food to make 1,800 food parcels should arrive in the country.  Please pray for the border crossing and distribution. This will be the last of the approved food parcels that we have set up from the current project. Pray that BGR and partners will have wisdom concerning the next step.

Also, please consider making a contribution toward this project. $90 provides food for a family for one week.  For more information visit http://www.gobgr.org and click on the “Giving” tab.

The women danced and sang, thanking God for the food that kept their families alive for a while longer.

The food, delivered by Charlie Daniels, a Southern Baptist missionary in southern Kenya, literally kept these women and their families from starving to death.

Read more here

As drought ravages the Maasai homeland in Kenya, families face the specter of starvation. Thanks to the generosity of Southern Baptists who gave to their World Hunger Fund, 180,000 Maasai received a full month’s supply of staple foods.

To read the full story, click here.

PRINCETON, W.V. – During the 30 hours that 150 believers fasted at Immanuel Baptist Church in Princeton, W.V., 31,250 people died of starvation around the world.

That’s why the believers were fasting.

“We fast to save their lives. We fast so they don’t have to,” participants were told as the late February event opened.

Seven years ago, when Immanuel held its first fast for world hunger, only 13 people participated, said Josh Johnson, the congregation’s associate pastor. The year, their “f30″ fast drew 150 participants – both youth and adults – from a wide variety of congregations and raised almost $8,400 for the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund.

Read the rest of the story here

Lori Funderburk, BGR prayer strategist, writes:

Five hundred food parcels are making their way into Zimbabwe with BGR partners.  They will be distributing food parcels to one of the poorer parts most affected by the situation there.  Please pray that the food will get to those most in need.  Pray that people will see the love of God through the distribution of these parcels.  Ask Him to multiply the use of these foods as those who receive them try to stretch them out to cover their needs for longer periods of time.  Ask God to intervene on their behalf as the country of Zimbabwe continues to collapse.

For information about the food parcel project, click here.