Meals of Hope

When you think about taking a lunch break from work or school, maybe you'll enjoy leftovers from last night's pasta dinner, or you'll run out to a local restaurant and pick up a freshly made turkey sandwich or green salad loaded with healthy vegetables.

That's if you're lucky.

Not everyone gets a hot lunch, let alone breakfast or dinner. In fact, food insecurity is a major issue for millions of people, and it's a cause near to Dave Warren's heart.

Dave, who owns Dave's Ace Hardware in Milton, Wis., has belonged to his area Rotary Club for 20 years. Early on, the club got involved with a project to help impoverished kids living in Chinandega — Nicaragua's sixth-largest city. Dave and some others created Kids Against Hunger Rock County to help package dry meals to ship down to Nicaragua throughout the year. The Rock County location is a satellite of Kids Against Hunger, a nonprofit that works to bring adequate nutrition to children and families in need in every part of the world.

So why did Dave's group choose Chinandega? Sure, the group also helps package and donate food to their local food pantry to help nearby folks in need. But through Rotary, they heard about an area in Chinandega where people of all ages — from little kids to the elderly — would scour a vast garbage dump for materials like bottles and cans to recycle for money to buy food. Or they'd simply scavenge for food at the dump.

When a Rotarian saw this in the 1990s, he helped organize the construction of a school next to the dump. Now those kids had a place to go. The only problem? When they had their "lunch break," the school didn't offer food, and most of the kids didn't have food at home so they'd end up back in the dump. It was a vicious cycle because when you're hungry, you think about where you'll find your next meal rather than focusing on schoolwork.

That's how the idea for Kids Against Hunger Rock County came about. Now the group in Milton organizes days throughout the year where volunteers package dry rice casserole meals consisting of rice, soy, dehydrated vegetables, and a powder mix with 21 vitamins and minerals.

One day in early 2020, Dave's group packaged 15,000 meals. That's just one day — the group sends about 250,000 meals a year! Since 2008, millions of meals have traveled to Nicaragua to help nourish the children of Chinandega, who at any other time would dig through other people's trash to find a morsel of food to fill their tummies. These meals get sent to Chinandega to feed these kids so they can stay in school. It's much easier to learn when you're not hungry.

Before food started to arrive in Nicaragua, school attendance dropped as low as 20%. Today, the schools in Nicaragua that benefit from meals from Kids Against Hunger Rock County see a 90% attendance rate. Many of the kids go on to get good jobs, keeping them out of poverty. Some kids have received scholarships to attend college and have gone on to become doctors and engineers. This is the power of having a nourishing meal. It helps keep you in school. It feeds your mind. It keeps you safe.

Dave has traveled to Nicaragua many times to deliver the food packages to the families and sees the Kids Against Hunger impact firsthand. Dave's Ace team supports his efforts by volunteering to pack up meals and making sure the store runs smoothly when their boss visits Nicaragua to do his good work.

"If I didn't have this to keep me busy, I wouldn't have near as fulfilling a life," Dave said. "I'm making a difference for other people."

Sources: KidsAgainstHunger.org