Time, Talent ... Tanzania!
Your Questions Answered
“When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed....” - Luke 14:13-14
On Sunday, July 20th the Youth Group and the Outreach Team unveiled a plan to bring to St. Bart’s a community event like it has never seen before -- an event right here on our own campus to package 50,000 non-perishable meals in just one afternoon. That’s right, 50,000 meals! It can (“Thy will”) be done. But we need everyone’s help. Everyone’s ... of all ages! So please mark your calendars and help us feed the hungry the afternoon of Sunday, October 12.
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We have already had many excellent questions about this event, and we will tackle one of them right here. You asked:
How much of this food stays in San Diego, and who makes that decision?
Friends & Family Community Connection (FFCC) is a Poway-based charity with 15 years of service to the San Diego community. In 2006, while working with under-privileged children in several Poway-area schools, FFCC volunteers felt God’s call to help tackle the problem of persistent hunger faced by many of these children and their families. FFCC answered that call in December 2006 by participating in a food-packaging event and distributing several thousand rice-soy-protein meals to the school sites. Within six months, FFCC had delivered more than 300,000 meals to San Diegans in need, through the schools, through housing shelters, and through the Salvation Army downtown.
Today, roughly one-third of the meals packaged at FFCC events are used to replenish the pantries of these local organizations. The remaining two-thirds go toward fighting the extreme hunger faced in other countries, such as Tanzania. In just 18 months, FFCC has provided well over ONE MILLION meals to the starving in Tanzania and to indigent families right here in our own backyard.
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Our Youth Group and our Outreach Team together have embraced this project precisely because it brings us unparalleled opportunity to unite our community in doing the Lord’s work in a very big way. No other project will allow us to witness to such a vast number of people in such a short period of time -- and to have so much fun doing it. Just ask the 13 St. Bart’s parishioners who helped package 85,000 meals on July 13 ... these events are fun!!!