Press release from loyal reader Eleanor. Please help if you can:
ASHEVILLE – By March 15, members of eight local Rotary Clubs need to raise $25,000 to purchase and package 100,000 meals for families in Haiti through Rotarians Against Hunger, a partnership with the Mission Healthcare Foundation and Mission Children’s Hospital’s Kids Against Hunger initiative.
“Rotary helps people all over the world, and there’s a tremendous need in Haiti right now for food as the people there are starving,” said Bill Bass, president of the Rotary Club of Asheville. “This need will be a long-time need and this program will help. We have a proven method of getting food into Haiti, and every penny of our efforts goes toward the food, which will be distributed to children in orphanages and schools and to others in need.”
Before the January earthquakes, 100,000 orphans lived in Haiti. Since the natural disaster, there are an additional 1.5 million homeless people in Haiti.
The international relief organization Stop Hunger Now will distribute the meal packages in Haiti. Each high-protein, dehydrated meal package contains a fortified rice-soy mixture that includes dehydrated vegetables, chicken flavoring and 21 vitamins and minerals. The meals are prepared by mixing them with boiling water, and each packet can provide six meals.
In addition to monetary donations, hundreds of volunteers are needed for the one-day meal-packaging event on Sat., April 24 at 19 Town Square Blvd. in Biltmore Park in South Asheville. The packaging event will consist of two two-hour shifts, with each shift requiring 400 volunteers.
The packaging event is open to the public, and young people in the sixth grade or a higher grade are encouraged to participate. Evergreen Community Charter School middle-schoolers are volunteering as part of their Earth Day ceremony.
“The experience of being involved in a packaging event is one you won’t forget,” Rotary District Governor Carol King said. “You get a true sense of community. You are doing something vitally important, with your family and others, and having fun at the same time.”
Make a donation or sign up to volunteer at the April 24 packaging event at www.RotariansAgainstHunger.com. Donations made by check should be written to the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina with “Rotarians Against Hunger” written in the memo line. Checks can be mailed to the attention of Rotary Club of Asheville, P.O. Box 1954, Asheville, North Carolina, 28802.
One hundred percent of the money raised through this project will go to the food packages. Rotary is a 501(c)3 charitable organization so donations are tax deductable to the extent allowed by law. If a donation is made by March 12, donors may claim it as a tax deduction in 2009 or 2010, since the effort is related to Haiti relief.