Over 150,000 meals for school children in Burundi! And there is still need for many more.

CHRF has received great news from our project partners in Burundi; they are now able to provide meals to their school children for the cost of just twelve cents per meal! Even better, they were able to lower the cost of the meals by buying the food from the local community, increasing and supporting their local economy! It’s very important to remember that this is not just an ordinary school-feeding program like we might think of in the United States. No, not even close, because for many school children the meals they receive at school for breakfast and lunch will be their only meals for the day. Many of the children’s parents cannot afford to provide food for their children and so they depend on the school to help keep them alive.

This is not a surprise, as Burundi was rated the world’s leading nation affected by hunger, according to the 2015 Global Hunger Index (GHI), a score calculated annually by the International Food Policy Research Institute. With 67.3 percent of the overall population undernourished, it is one of two countries with a hunger situation labeled “extremely alarming” in the study. Additionally, due to rising costs of food — the price of beans increased by nearly 50 percent in recent years — the average household now spends over 70 percent of its income on food.

One of the integral missions of CHRF has always been to make a difference in this world by helping one child at a time, that is why we were so excited when our partners in Burundi shared with us that “though we receive them malnourished, we are making a change in the children’s lives, one meal at a time”.

And that is also just another reason why Children’s Hunger Relief Fund has helped to provide more then 80,000 meals for the rest of this year! This is in addition to more then 70,000 meals we have already provided this year bringing our total for 2016 to over 150,000 meals for school children in Burundi! But we aren’t done yet; we also hope to provide an additional 80,000 meals for the remainder of the school year in 2017. We need your help to provide even more life-changing meals for these needy school children. Our partners report that they will still need an additional $10,000 this school year to cover the full cost of their feeding program. Any amount you can send will help by simply designating your gifts for Burundi! Just five dollars can help to provide forty meals for these school children!

For years we have partnered with our trusted friends in Burundi to help ensure children have at least two nutritious meals at school each day. For some of these children, they will be their only meals for the day. Our partners share that “Each meal provided will ensure that every child attending our schools, as well as those caring for them will be performing without the fear and worry of running on an empty stomach.”

Although we have helped provide over 150,000 meals for children this year, our partners in Burundi need additional support in order to provide enough nutritious meals for all of their students throughout the school year. You can help support this project by donating online and designating your gifts for Burundi. Remember, with this exciting project twenty dollars can help provide over one hundred and fifty (150) meals for school children!

Thank you and May God Bless you.