A LONG winter...Cape Basic Foods feeds the hungry!

As spring is upon us, here, we reflect back to our long, cold winter and we are grateful to have been instruments to feed so many hungry children.  As Aletia Grundling, MCM's CEO shared "our vision was shown so practically during the June/July holiday, by feeding over 27,000 children."

Hungry children lined up with their food containers in hand

One of our MCM Food Center partners during this winter holiday was Cape Basic Foods, and we are grateful to this organization for supporting our FACED program during the school holidays.  FACED stands for Feed A Child Every Day, a program that we launched 2 years ago (during the 'Soccer World Cup' school holidays) and has proved to be successful at helping to feed thousands of children who would normally receive a government sponsored meal during their regular school day (see our blog posting from 6 July 2011 for more information about the FACED program).  We are also grateful to Iona, a staff member of Cape Basic Foods who daily dished out food to these very hungry children in an area called Klapmuts just outside of Paarl.  Iona shared the following thoughts:  "on 10 July 2012 a preacher visited our company at 8:00 in the morning to deliver a message about faith in God.  At 11:30, on a sunny winter day, we left the office to hand out the food...in the various squatter camps (informal settlements).  There were only 3 buckets and needless to say there were too many mouths and not enough food.

Children and mothers posing with soup buckets in the background

The people are so very, very hungry...especially with all the rain and cold that we have had this winter.  At the last camp, I said to the young lady helping me that I'm first going to pray over the last of the food.  There was no way that we could give all the people food from what was left.  I just thanked Jesus for multiplying the food and supplying what was needed.  When the last person came to receive her portion, it was the last portion in the bucket.  Praise Jesus!  This was so wonderful, especially for the young lady with me as she has not seen anything like this before.  God is good all the time and all the time God is good!"

Smiling faces with tummies ready to be filled

 

More hungry tummies

Aletia reflected upon this huge effort and shared with the MCM staff "looking at the impact that we made during the holidays, and how many children were served, I want to remind you to be alert so that we all can identify other areas where we can care for those in need.  God wants to use us to serve the poorest of the poor...this is our vision."