Kareen and I had the honor and pleasure of volunteering some of our time to help Numana and the Salvation Army during their "A Million Meals for Haiti" event. The goal for this weekend is to package a million meals that will be delivered to Haiti. We learned that this food event has been taking place since January and so far over 5 million meals have been delivered. We were assigned to a table that consisted of 5-6 other people; 4 buckets of ingredients, bags to be filled with the meals, scales to weigh each packaged meal to make sure it was the right about for 6 meal servings per bag, vacuum sealers, boxes, tape and did I mention the people to make this all happen?? I must say I had an amazing time. The 3 hours that we spent making these meals flew by...I guess that's because we were "doing the most good". The warehouse was full of people volunteering their time, bodies, smiles and strengths to make this event successful. Our table consisted of mostly Salvation Army workers, but nonetheless they were dedicated like we were. At the end of our shift we had packaged countless meals, were dusty, eyes burning, the smell of chicken and seasonings filled our noses and our bodies were aching a little, but it was all worth it. To know that we were providing Haitians with healthy and nutritious meals was worth it all!! One of the Salvation Army ministers that we had the pleasure of working with told the story of the name Numana, but I couldn't hear her, but Kareen did (she will blog about it). I had an amazing, blessed and heart opening experience that I will never forget. I will continue to make an effort to volunteer as long as I am physically able too. I am thankful for this experience and feel an obligation, but yet an honor to share it with you. If you have never volunteered or haven't done it in a while..find an organization (there are plenty out there) and do it. Here is some info about Numana if you care to volunteer with them; what a great effort and impact they are making in and for Haiti. Remember a little goes a long way!!
The Mission of Numana is to empower you to save the starving.
We do this by facilitating Packaging Events at which volunteers package four simple ingredients in to small plastic bags.
We are different because we construct our concept so the sponsor of the event gets the credit, not Numana. This event easily attracts publicity and all of the publicity will be directed towards the sponsor.
Our meals have four different ingredients: rice, soy, freeze-dried vegetables, chicken flavoring along with 21 vitamins targeted to help the immune system.The cost of each life-sustaining meal is only 30 cents each. Built into the cost of the meals are all the ingredients, packaging, administration, and international shipping of the food. Funding streams vary according to events.
Our Partner, Salvation Army World Services has agreed to deliver our meals - primarily to school feeding programs in the most impoverished areas of the world. The U.N.'s research has shown that the most effective way to address their Number One Millennium Development Goal (world hunger), is to implement school feeding programs. They will also use these meals in emergency relief situations as the need arises.
this is so wonderful what you ladies are doing. God loves your work and will be blessed with all the people you are helping.
ReplyDeletemuch love.
Margie Longoria