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.

Family Matters

By Mike Tenbusch | May 6, 2022 This past Friday, our board of trustees made a huge commitment to build a “family life center” in Honduras as one of our four goals this year.  We want to give our scholars a safe and nurturing place they can go to after school to be...

Letting Go of Our Nets

By Mike Tenbusch | April 8, 2022 This past Wednesday morning, I was surrounded by a room of truly amazing women while on a Zoom call with equally amazing women in Ethiopia in a quest to bring the jewelry they make to market here in the United States. It was a unique...

The Challenges of Walking Hand-in-Hand

By Mike Tenbusch | March 11, 2022 Every week, our team members in each nation have one-on-one meetings with our scholarship students or their parents to discuss their lives and their progress meeting their goals.  They record highlights from these conversations (that...