Then, on Tuesday, your family can host a ‘Virtual Family’ from Ethiopia as you Have-A-Rice-Day by substituting one of your meals for a simple bowl of rice.

As your family gathers to eat your meal of rice, read A Mother’s Heart Story of a family living on a garbage dump in Korah, Ethiopia.

Your family can make a donation to help a similar family trapped and feeling hopeless living on the garbage dump. 100% of your donation will go towards helping one of these families.
Any size of donation will help and there are sponsorships available for $120 per month that will provide the means to enabling a self-sustaining future for such a family.

The Lives We Touched

Watch the video:

Thank you to everyone who participated in the 2011 Rice Raiser campaign and our Have-A-Rice-Day activities this past year! We’re very honoured that you supported and gave to this work and we are thrilled to know that as a result, many lives have been touched, and improved!!

Please watch the video and read the Newsletter to hear a little bit about just how people have been impacted.

Newsletter to download: 2011 Campaign Results – the Lives We Touched

List of 2011 participating Schools/Groups:

On November 20 – the International Day of the Child, we challenged you to Have-A-Rice-Day and collect your quarters.

The World Food Program stated that it costs just 25 cents to feed a school child in a developing country.  So, we asked you to save up your quarters to help feed children in Guatemala.

It was a great start!! $480. was sent to help kick start a feeding program in a kindergarten in Guatemala with an organization called Love Guatemala. These children come from very poor families and their typical meal is a cup of coffee and a tortillia. Not very nourishing.

Now, on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays, 80 little people, ages 2 – 5 yrs. are fed a nourishing meal.

Monday the children receive porridge, banana and Incaparina (a drink that is filled with vitamins and minerals)

Wednesday is black beans, bread and Incaparina.

Friday is scrambled eggs, bread and Incaparina. 

Thank you for everyone who collected their money to help these children.

Children eat their breakfast

Now that we’ve found out how simple it is to help little children receive the healthy food their bodies need to grow and develop, let’s keep going!!

 Keep a little coin bank or cup close at hand to toss your quarters in all year long and next November 20, on International Child’s Day we’ll have a lot more money to help a lot more children!

Waiting for our friends!

Good food provides lots of energy to run!

Breakfast!

Enjoying her breakfast!

Keep Collecting those quarters, and remember, each one is another healthy meal for an impovershed child, helping them to grow and develop.

Our Today is Their Tomorrow!!  – 2012 HRI Theme!

Find out how many people’s lives you can affect by raising $300 with your class mates, in your small group, at your office, in your neighbourhood, with your family and with your friends. It just takes one person to light the candle of hope and organize a group.

Remember, Our Today is Someone’s Tomorrow! Make the choice today to go into action on behalf of those who are imprisioned in their poverty. Make their tomorrow a different one that is filled with hope and promise.

Rice Raiser Campaign Resource Kits are ready and you can get yours by Registering your group now.

1. Register Now
2. Give your group a name
3. Set a time to start and to end
4. Invite your group to an information time
5. Show the DVD about the projects
6. Decide on activities to raise funds
7. Remember to ask everyone to bring in a bag of rice to help feed people locally
8. Fill in your report and send it to us along with the money raised.

Soymilk is ready!

First Steps provide VitaCow machines which are run by electricity and Vita Goat machines, which are fueled by wood or coal. The Vita Goat machines are being phased out because they are much more labour intense and there is often a shortage of wood and coal. Our VitaCow has been situated in a factory with five other machines. This is a good location for it because the machine is well looked after by the staff and because it is in a factory, it receives more consistent electricity that it would in an orphanage or school.

The VitaCow machines are powerful little work horses…or rather cows as they produce 2000 cups plus of soymilk a day! The soymilk is extremely beneficial to young children, helping to keep malnutrition at bay. And, for the children who do come into the orphanages and primary schools malnourished, within a few months of this daily beverage, we are told that their improvement is very noticeable! We even got to sample it in three different locations. Each time it tasted different. Some sweeten it for the children with sugar when they have it available (sugar is expensive) and I must say that version was the best. One place added salt and that wasn’t nearly as appealing.

We traveled to North Korea in the early part of winter and the temperature was hovering around freezing. In the capitol it was foggy, grey and drizzly…the kind of damp coldness that makes being outside miserable. Though under strict guidance by our ever-present minders, we were treated like dignitaries being priveleged to some of North Koreas finest foods, entertainment (including the symphony and circus) and monuments – amazing buildings and statues. We visited several of First Steps project sites in Nampo before heading up through the mountains to Wonson, a port city about a 4 hour drive from Pyongyang, but it took us nearly 6 hours to make the journey as it was snowing in the higher elevations. We saw hundreds of people along the road, doing snow removal by hand shoveling. Many used makeshift shovels of wood and rope….most of the people were gloveless. I do not know how many hours they would be required to work, but it was snowing pretty heavily.

We visited kindergartens, schools and orphanages. Most were unheated and without electricity, except for the small rooms where they kept the youngest children. For the rest of the places we went to, children wore their jackets in their classrooms. They were served soymilk when we came and we saw several performances of children who excelled at singing, dancing and playing instruments. Though much of what we were exposed to was planned to show us their best, we most definitely did see children who were small for their age, some with skin and hair problems – signs of malnutrition. The houses in the villages that we passed by did not have smoke coming from their homes causing me to ask if indeed they were heated. I was assured that they were, with coal. But I still didn’t see any evidence of burning to heat their dwellings.

The need here is so great. It is a difficult place to work because of the diplomacy required and the restrictions that prohibit freedom and openness, but it is most certainly a much needed place to be. There is a generation at risk and through the help of people like you; we can make a big difference in their lives.

We took with us a few suitcases filled with baby formula for the infants at the Baby Home in Wonson. We piled all of the formula on the orphanage director’s table and asked how long it would last. We were told, “Two days.” I was very surprised that it would only last that long and I asked what the babies received on a regular basis. I was told that they are fed powdered milk, but they did not specify what happens when that runs out. They were very excited for the formula and all the nutrients it would give the babies, but they most certainly need more of it on a consistent basis.

Wonson Baby Home receives baby formual

First Steps is an excellent organization and I look forward to working with them once again in the 2012 Rice Raiser Campaign. Due to their dedication and good track record of 10 years, I doubt that they will have any problems operating in the country under the new leadership.

Read this short Newsletter
Hunger Response Global Project Trip

The World Food Program has a contest going on from Nov. 1-30, 2011 for teams to play Free Rice game. We’re looking for team members. Contact us and let us know you want to play for Hunger Response Int. Team.

Join our team or start your own at school or with a group of friends.

Play, learn and help the hungry!!

THE CANADIAN FREERICE SCHOOL CHALLENGE 1

Hunger Response Int's FaceBook Silent Auction

FIND US ON FACEBOOK! www.facebook.com/HUNGER.RESPONSE

Businesses and individuals have generously donated some great items that are being Silent Auctioned to raise opperational funds for our organization.

A great time to do a little shopping for yourself or for Christmas gifts and help the work and efforts of Hunger Response International at the same time.
Thank you to the great businesses who are supporting our work and thanks to everyone who shops with their bids! – Oh and if you have a business and would like to support HRI by donating an item for our auction, please call us at 604-850-5891. We’ll be happy to share your support!

Save-On-Foods store manager, Mark Berry and Hunger Response Int. Executive Director, Lorri Sawatsky award World Food Day Raffle Winner, Nicole Araki the $200 gift card prize.

Congratulations to Nicole Araki for winning the $200 Save-On-Foods gift card on World Food Day from our booth!
Nicole says she was very excited to hear that she won and that it would be a big help to her and her family!
It was a great day and we are very thankful to everyone who supported this event!!

Thanks to Save-On-Foods #904 (Abbotsford, Sumas Village) for supporting this event and for donating the $200 Save-On-Foods gift card. …and the winner is: Nicole Avaki from Abbotsford

Thank you also to Yale Secondary School’s Kiwanis Key Club led by teacher, Ann Penner. The students were really great and customers generously responded to their request to help the hungry on World Food Day.

We raised $1,024.50 in cash to help with the work of Hunger Response Int. and 40 kilograms of rice for the food bank!

Together we are changing hunger!