Saturday, March 06, 2010
'Stop Hunger Now' gains momentum
St. Elizabeth's Episcopal Church is leading an effort to help Haiti.
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After the ground shook beneath Port-au-Prince in February, the reverberations moved people such as Jenny Fife to reach into their pockets and send what they could.
From Roanoke, medical companies shipped supplies while physicians and nurses headed to treat survivors in Haiti. Fife, from St. Elizabeth's Episcopal Church, is leading what may be the Roanoke Valley's largest Haiti relief effort so far.
She's organizing more than 1,200 volunteers who will meet March 14 at Patrick Henry High School to pack as many as 285,000 meals of rice, soy, dehydrated vegetables and flavoring mixes for distribution on the island.
Churches across the country have done the same under the umbrella of a nonprofit called Stop Hunger Now. But to put it in theological terms, this will be a collaboration of the ecumenical kind. Participants have signed up from nine Methodist churches, eight Episcopalian, two Baptist, a Lutheran, a Catholic and the local Greek Orthodox church.
"When we feel called to do something important, denominational differences melt away," Fife said.
It started as the Lenten project for St. Elizabeth's, a congregation so small that "we don't even own our DVD player," Fife joked.
The goal was to raise $2,500 and organize 50 church members to pack meals for Stop Hunger. After the Jan. 12 earthquake, Fife, the wife of St. Elizabeth's Rector Richard Fife, called to check on other church's interest in helping.
The result: Volunteers and donations from other congregations, as well as participation from Boy Scout troops, and students from the Southwest Virginia Ballet Co., Ferrum College, Hollins University and Virginia Tech.
By Wednesday, St. Elizabeth's had collected more than $20,000 in donations, with a goal of roughly $70,000 -- the cost Stop Hunger Now estimates for taking a freight container from Roanoke to Norfolk to Haiti.
Interest also picked up at Patrick Henry High, which has about 40 Haitian students. Students planned to show at an assembly on Thursday a video saying that $1 can cover four meals.
Feeding people is only a short-term part of the island nation's long-term development needs, Fife said.
But for students like Molly Willis, an 11th grader and Christ Episcopal Church member, it's impossible to see harrowing images of disaster on television and not want to reach into the screen and pull the victims out.
"They're our brothers and our sisters," Willis said. "To see them have to go through what they're going through is awful. I don't know how to describe the emotion."
