FEED TODAY – FOOD FOR TOMORROW
Beth and I have been back in the States for just a week now and I am overwhelmed by the support Americans, and especially Iowans, have for the work we are doing in South Africa. Statistics still show that 15% of our children in South Africa are malnourished. This often causes their growth to be stunted and also their brain development to be permanently impaired.
Feed Today
With the assistance of Meals from the Heartland, Convoy of Hope, and thousands of Iowans we have successfully imported 6 million meals to our province of Limpopo, South Africa. That is unquestionably a lot of food, and it has been a God Sent blessing to the orphans that we are serving! As I look back over the past 5 years, it also seems like just a cup of water in an ocean of need.
For some time now, we have been looking for ways to feed these children with food from Africa. We continue to develop and improve our intensive vegetable farming operation to provide fresh vegetables as a renewable food source.
Food For Tomorrow
A few years ago we developed a bakery to provide warm fresh bread to the children in our Del Cramer Child Development Center. That has been a big blessing, but quite frankly, that center serves 105 children out of the 7,500 that we help provide food and nutrition. Around the same time the bakery started we developed a poultry program to provide fresh chicken meat to our children, but again this was only at our Del Cramer Center.
We are looking at developing a layer program to provide fresh eggs to hundreds of our children and also a tilapia program to provide fresh fish to supplement their diets.
Safari game hunting is a big industry in the area of South Africa where we live, and we are exploring ways for safari hunters to be able to donate the meat from their hunts to help provide red meat to supplement our children’s nutritional program.