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Numana-Share the Bounty helps HaitiBy Stan Wilson Southwest Kansas Faith and Family Kansas Norma Henton didn't set out to start a food drive for the Haitians when she visited a church in Platte City, Mo. However, as the song says, "It only takes a spark to get the fire going." She returned to Dodge City with an idea, and that is indeed what has happened. The church Norma visited was just starting to become involved with the Numana-Share the Bounty food drive for Haiti, and they passed out the plastic rice meal bags and it struck a chord with Norma. She shared the idea with her pastor, Jeff Heirs, and the rest is history. To date, 11 Southwest Kansas churches have signed up to participate, and the fire is just getting started. You too, are invited to become a part of Share the Bounty, a humanitarian group dedicated to packaging meals to be sent to Haiti. Numana, Inc. will supply the event. Numana Inc. has partnered with the Salvation Army World Service to provide the meals to school children in Haiti. They believe that by educating the children, they can help break the poverty cycle. The children come to school and receive the meal bags and clean water. One meal bag will feed six people a fortified meal. By uniting the Dodge City area, Norma and her G-Force (Green Shirts) are hoping to package 260,130 rice, beans and soy bags at the Dodge City Civic Center on Oct. 2. The quantity will fill one 40-foot shipping container to be picked up and delivered by the Salvation Army to their headquarters in Haiti. To fill the shipping container, $78,000 needs to be raised. Numana will secure the food and host the event; $30 pays for 100 meals and $300 pays for 1,000 meals. Participating churches and individuals need to supply 1,500 volunteers and donations to pay for the meal products. Numana is a Kansas non-profit organization formed in 2008 as an international hunger relief organization. To date Numana has coordinated 100,000 volunteers to package over 17 million meals. The meals consist of rice, soy, freeze dried beans and 21 vitamins targeted to help the immune system of malnourished people. Rick McNary, founder and CEO of Numana, says it all started when he was on a mission trip and he watching the youth play a pick-up game of baseball with a stick and tattered tennis ball in the blazing heat of Nicaragua. A starving, filthy, but beautiful 5- year-old girl came up to him begging for money. When she whispered in his ear, "Please give me food...I'm starving," Rick says that broke his heart. Those words immediately changed his worldview, and the trajectory of his life was significantly altered. From that moment on, he vowed that he would do whatever he could for the rest of his life to feed starving people. Rick visited with a group called "Food for Children" in Princeton, W.Va., and he set out to do something similar in Kansas. With his group of friends, Rick began to discuss various ways to accomplish this. They decided that what Americans really like is a big event with a festive atmosphere and, since they lived in a small Kansas town, they needed to make the operation a mobile event. Through research, they discovered that feeding and educating school children was the best way to address hunger. To solve the problem of distribution, they solicited the aid of the Salvation Army. Numana hosted its first packaging event Dec. 29 and 30, 2009, in El Dorado, Kan. Over 4,000 people showed up for the packaging event, and they packaged 285,120 meals. They had selected Haiti as the first recipient, even before the earthquake. The Salvation Army was able to drop the first shipment by parachute. Of course the earthquake has increased the need many times over, and they continue to be the focus of packaging events. Rick says, "This truly is a miracle still in the making! We call it a miracle straight from the heart of God." Henton says, "To reach our goal we are asking for monetary donations of any size. Groups may have fundraisers or just make donations." Donations may be sent to Numana-Share the Bounty, 11046 W. Highway 56, Dodge City, KS 67801. Equally important with the financial side of the event is manpower for the packaging event. To make the day flow smoothly, you are asked to register for a two-hour time slot for the packaging event. Call 620-225-2532 or evenings 620-227-7013. You may also go online at www.numanasharethebounty.eventbrite.com. Walk-ins are also welcome and to serve our local people in need, volunteers are asked to bring a non-perishable food item. For further information about Numana, go to www.numanainc.com. (Story reprinted with permission from Stan Wilson.)
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