Brazilians donate 54 tons of food to Haitians

A campaign dubbed Alimente a Esperança (Portuguese for “feed the hope”) is to send 52 thousand tons of food donated by Brazilians to Haiti. Today (Feb. 13), volunteers linked to the Association and Fraternity of Saint Francis in Providence of God started stowing away the donated supplies into containers which are to leave the country and sail off to Haiti next Saturday (18).

Éder Lima, one of the coordinators in the food collection team, said that the initiative came as a response to a request made by the Haitian population itself. “When we listed, alongside the local population, their main needs, the answer came promptly: food,” he said.

Campaign Coordinator Friar Paulo Batista talked about the importance of keeping the initiative active: “despite the Brazilians's demonstration of solidarity and love to their neighbors, the situation facing the people of Haiti is desolating. This food will renew the hopes of the Haitian people for a better life, so we must continue raising awareness,” he argued.

Mission

Since 2011, the association has conducted a missionary project in Haiti which takes food and other health care and education services to locals.

Today, over 650 people are served by the mission daily, in addition to the nearly 200 families who given food stamps. Every week, doctor and nurses help children and pregnant women, who take home the medicines necessary for their treatment.

The mission in Haity also distributes a daily 2 thousand bread rolls, enriched with special mixture of nutrients designed to fight malnutrition. “The bread supersedes the Té, a cookie made of clay that Haitians used to eat to fool hunger,” says Friar Gabriel Alves, one of the people responsible for the mission in Haiti.

Approximately five months ago, the association founded a new nutrition center, with a capacity of serving 60 people at once. The center was named after Dr. Zilda Arns, a Brazilian pediatrician who founded the Pastoral da Criança and died in 2010, in Haiti, when an earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince, the capital. She was on a humanitarian mission in the city.

Translated by Fabrício Ferreira