wfn.org | New Hunger Organization Formed

[owner-umethnews@ecunet.org (United Methodist News list)]

Reply-to: owner-umethnews@ecunet.org (United Methodist News list)
"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS 97" by SUSAN PEEK on April 15, 1997 at 14:24
Eastern, about DAILY NEWS RELEASES FROM UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE (589
notes).

Note 589 by UMNS on Feb. 4, 1998 at 17:20 Eastern (4075 characters).

CONTACT:	Linda Bloom				62(10-21-71B){589}
		New York (212) 870-3803		Feb. 4, 1998

Stop Hunger Now fills
niche as food supplier

		by United Methodist News Service

	The Rev. Ray Buchanan considers himself a "religious entrepreneur" -– someone
who can match resources to needs.
	Buchanan is executive director of Stop Hunger Now, a new organization that
supplies food and medical supplies to relief organizations already working in
various countries.
	In Haiti, for example, so many nongovernmental organizations have set up shop
that "they're tripping over each other," said Buchanan, a United Methodist
pastor and member of the Virginia Annual (regional) Conference. "What they
need is the equipment and the food to do the work. Our niche is to be a
supplier to the folks already on the ground."
	The idea for Stop Hunger Now was conceived last September while Buchanan was
co-director at the Society of St. Andrew, an organization that salvages fresh
but commercially unmarketable produce to feed the hungry.
	Buchanan had contacted one of the society's individual donors, John Hewitt of
Virginia Beach, Va., who agreed to donate $25,000 for food shipments to
Armenia, Liberia and North Korea. Hewitt then asked how he and the society
were doing, Buchanan said.
	The pastor spoke of the society's successful ministry, but expressed his
personal frustration at being tied down by administrative tasks. What he'd
rather be doing, Buchanan told Hewitt, was visiting crisis spots, assessing
needs and delivering food to the people who need it the most.
	After meeting with the head of the Hewitt Foundation, Stop Hunger Now was
born.
"He (Hewitt) has committed a half-million dollars over two years plus
sustained funding thereafter in order to start a new organization devoted to
emergency food relief in crisis areas around the world," Buchanan explained.
"We'll also be working in areas of chronic hunger and malnutrition."
	In the month since Stop Hunger Now's January launch, another $100,000 has
been raised, and work has started in four countries.
"We're going to work through UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief) and
the United Methodist Church as much as possible," he said. "But we're not
limited to the United Methodist Church."
	In Haiti, UMCOR has pledged to ship 750,000 servings of high-protein soup mix
–- developed by Stop Hunger Now with the Breedlove Dehydration Plant of
Lubbock, Texas -– to the Methodist Church there, which will distribute it. In
North Korea, Amigos Internationales, another relief group, will distribute two
million servings of the soup mix.
	Heritage United Methodist Church in Lynchburg, Va., a local business there
and two Armenian nongovernmental groups have worked together on a shipment of
$85,000 of medical supplies and equipment to Malatia Hospital in Yerevan,
Armenia. Stop Hunger Now also is providing rice and cooking oil to Ndegbormei
Development Organization, which is distributing the food to families with
malnourished children in Sierra Leone.
	During a recent 12-day trip to Nicaragua, Haiti and Honduras, Buchanan saw
many examples of programs that required only a few resources to make a
tremendous difference.
In Nicaragua, for instance, he visited a 72-year-old woman who looks after 50
abandoned and orphaned children in one of the worst barrios of Managua. The
state pays for teachers at the day school she operates, but there's no funding
for anything else, Buchanan said.
"She literally spends eight to 12 hours a day begging in the streets for these
kids."
	For the past three months, he said, those children have lived primarily on
chicken skins and fat discarded from a restaurant.
"It would cost about $300 a month to feed those kids a nutritious diet, plus a
meal a day for the schoolkids," Buchanan added.
	Stop Hunger Now is seeking information on the needs of the hungry outside the
United States as well as resources and financial help for meeting those needs.
	More information on the organization is available -- toll free -– at (888)
501-8440.
# # #
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 To make suggestions or give your comments, send a note to 
 umns@ecunet.org or Susan_Peek@ecunet.org

 This article sent to both the umethnews list <umethnews-request@ecunet.org>
 and also to the Worldwide Faith News list wfn-news <majordomo@wfn.org>
 Look at the header files to figure out which this is.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------