“Rise Against Hunger” Food Aid Event To Be Held in Blue Grass

Rise Against Hunger is a non-profit organization that wants to end world hunger by 2030, and a local church and community members are stepping up to help. Andre Crummett, minister of the Blue Grass United Methodist Charge, speaks about a food packing event planned for 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, December 9, 2018 at the Blue Grass Ruritan Building. Food is expected to arrive in bulk to be re-packaged in just over two hours.

Rev. Crummett says, “It comes in to us. It’ll be in fifty-pound bags of rice and soybean, and it will leave in boxes, packaged, ready to ship. It’s a fun event when you’re there, and you get goin’. You’ll put a soybean meal, rice, dehydrated vegetables, and a protein pack, and then they will be vacuum-sealed and boxed, and they will go to where they deem the need to be the greatest. 29 cents will buy a meal, but it’s also cost of shipping, and we think that this is a good thing for the amount of money that you can put out.

“Last year, we had a huge event for this part of the world in that we did about 27,000 meals, and it took about two and a half hours, and we appreciate people making donations. We appreciate people coming to help. I always worry that we may not have enough people to do it in a timely manner, and we always have enough people, so, for me, it’s the opportunity for us to do mission work in Third World countries without ever leaving Highland County because we are packaging food that will go to places that there is a need for food. There is a need for food in many places, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, South America, are the places where the need is more prevalent. One of the hunger facts that Rise Against Hunger puts out is that in the world, there are 792 million people that will not get enough nutrition today to live a healthy life, and a lot of the food that is packaged will go to schools, because in Third World countries, where food is scarce, some people will send their children to school if they get a meal, so not only are they getting the meal, they’re getting an education, which hopefully will break the cycle of poverty, but they are expanding now beyond just packaging food but trying to educate people in best practices of agriculture, helping with clean water, because in many places, clean water is a scarcity, and people get sick and die just from the lack of good drinking water.”

So, what about this year’s impact? Rev. Crummett continues, “I’m not sure how many meals we’ll have. We’re getting close to having 20,000, I think, this year, depending on what money comes in, but if people would want to make donations, they can make checks out to Rise Against Hunger. They can send it to me, and that would be Andre Crummett at 484 Laurel Fork Road, Blue Grass, Virginia, 24413, and if you could donate, that would be wonderful, but if you would come and put your hands to helpin’, that would be wonderful, too. There is something everybody can do. There’s standup jobs. There’s sit down jobs. At the end, we have soup and sandwiches for people that want to stay and talk a little bit, and I just appreciate the generosity of the people in the community. We are getting contributions not just from the Blue Grass community, but from the county, and in the last several events we have, we have had people from other churches, and just people in the community have heard about it, and they wanna come, and everyone is welcome.”