It wasn’t until I became a father that I realized how important food is to one’s emotional well-being. Growing up, three square meals a day were just always there for me, not much different than having clean water to drink. I just took food for granted. But when my daughter, Grace, was born and she got hungry, man, you had better get her some food fast. Her cries for food were so fierce that it made me think about how it would feel for those kids and parents who didn’t have food nearby.
In our work at International Samaritan, I meet people in that situation all the time. We walk hand in hand with people in garbage dump communities around the world to help them break out of poverty, and many have told me about the food they search for in garbage dumps.
That’s why I’m asking you to join me in a fast on Friday, March 8th—a Fast2Change in which you limit all of the food you eat that day to cost less than $2. Why? Because close to 1 in 10 people in the world live on less than $2 per day.
Our team here and abroad is going to take a day to experience a little bit of what that would feel like, and we are asking you and others around the world to join us in this fast. We are also asking you to donate what you spend on food in a typical day so that we can fund at least 30 scholarships for children and young adults living in garbage dump communities in Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
Please click on the links below to learn about how you can join us in this fast, or perhaps even use your fast to sponsor a scholarship with your friends’ support.
When the Facts of Life Don’t Make Sense
“We would get to the dump at 4:00 in the morning to get food to eat.” We hear this frequently when talking to families in the garbage dump communities. Invariably, they say this as a simple matter of fact, much like we might say, “I leave the house at 7:00 in the...
What Do We Do?
Our team gathered recently for a two-day retreat to update our strategic plan. One of the questions we were trying to answer is what we should do in Costa Rica and smaller communities in Guatemala where we have been sending student immersion teams but do not have...
What a Nun, a Priest, Kobe, and You Have in Common
The death of Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven others last Sunday stunned me, as it did the world. As I read and watched the stories about his legacy over this past week, what struck me most is that he went to Mass at 7:00 on Sunday morning, shortly before boarding...
