Feeding the Hungry

    I’ve always heard, “If you give a man to fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime.” I think that there is a lot of truth in that statement, but I really love what Shane Clairborne says in his book, Irresistible Revolution, “We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it.” The truth is that some people need to be given a fish today to eat and be nourished so that they have the strength to learn to fish tomorrow. And the unjust boundaries that have kept people away from the fish pond must be removed if we are really going to see lives changed and poverty ended.
       This time of year is a particularly hard time for many people in Candelaria. There are six months during the year (during times of planting and harvesting) when the sugar cane plantation is hiring extra hands. However, the other half of the year, work is very hard to find here. We are at the end of several months with very little work. Many people in the village are currently unemployed, which means they are without income and are lacking the basic necessities such as food.
       For many of these people the only option is to buy food on credit. Many stores here will allow people to buy on credit, however they charge much higher rates (12 cordoba/pound instead of 8). Desperate families are accumulating an insurmountable debt. Now any money that they do receive goes directly to these stores to pay down their debt enough to receive an extended line of credit. Store owners are taking advantage of family’s desperation and these families are getting locked into a never-ending cycle of credit and debt.
     We are longing to see an end to hunger and to poverty in this area, but we need your help! We are seeking to provide food to families who are in desperate situations for the next couple of weeks before they begin working at the sugar cane fields again. We also want to begin a store where families can purchase food at low prices. We would be able to buy food in bulk and then sell at bulk prices. This store would enable us to help out families who have nothing and give a hand-up to those who are working to get out of debt. Please help us both feed our families in need and help provide an alternative to the system that takes advantage of people’s desperation and hunger.
     With a one-time gift of $50, you could feed five families for a week. For $10 you could feed a family for a week; that’s only one meal out at a restaurant. That means that skipping one meal out this week would mean life for an entire family here in Candelaria. That would be children who aren’t going to bed hungry and parents who are not crying before the Lord wondering how they will feed their family today. Please help us make this dream a reality by visiting our website at www.newsongmissionnicaragua.com and click Donate. Also, please send us a message and let us know to mark your gift for our food program.