The CHRF Team Travels to Hospitals and Refugee Camps in Ghana
Children’s Hunger Relief Fund is proud to support and provide several hospitals and clinics in the West African nation of Ghana with medical supplies. This year Children’s Hunger Relief Fund also sponsored a Christmas feeding project for 300 children and mothers in Ghana. Children’s Hunger Relief Fund’s Team Director Ken McGrath and Assistant Vice President Brant Doner traveled to Ghana to distribute some of the medicines and food throughout the country to those in need. Brant shares about their trip: “Our trip’s purpose was to inspect hospitals where CHRF medical supplies are distributed. We also met with government officials and the King of the region where many of the supplies are distributed.” Ken McGrath also talked about what he saw in Ghana: “While inspecting the hospitals we provide medicines to, we passed out just some of the medicines that we have shipped to Ghana this year, more then $8,000,000 in value. The nurses, doctors and managers that we met with were so grateful and blessed. While on this trip we inspected four different hospitals and clinics. Each one of them was providing life-saving care to the local people who had nowhere else to go. We were providing some of the hospitals with anti-biotic to help with dangerous fevers. As I told many of the patients we met, last month I had to use the same anti-biotic, as I was very ill and thousands of miles (across the United States) from my home. These people need any help that they can get, and the doctors are so grateful for everything we can provide to them.” The last day of the CHRF team’s trip to Ghana they went to a Liberian refugee camp where CHRF was sponsoring a food distribution for 300 children and adults. The refugees who had escaped their home country in the 90’s have been unable to migrate back as they have no food or money to take on their long journey home. Ken shares about the experience, “It was like walking into the twilight zone. Everything you thought you knew about the world falls apart. Children shouldn’t be so hungry that they are crying to their mothers for food. The same mothers that go without a meal for three or four days just so that their children can have one meal a day." "Then it hits you, the feeding that our project partners provide, that CHRF donors have helped to provide, is one of the only things keeping these people going. They are so grateful for so little. Just 25 cents a meal provides them with so much hope." I spoke with mothers whose children and husbands have died. They had been through so much pain and sadness it was really unbelievable. Instead of giving up hope they had adopted orphaned children who had lost their parents. They also set examples for the other mothers, these women are the leaders of the group, leading with an inconceivable and amazing strength from within.” Brant also shared about his time feeding the children, “With the support of our donors we hope to continue funding and sponsoring our partners to continue this great feeding project. Up to 800 children come every day just to find what many times will be their only meal. Before we passed out food, the leader of the camp asked us to pray. I prayed that the people would know and trust that there are others out there like CHRF donors who would continue to support them and that they wouldn’t give up the hope that keeps them alive everyday. The situation was so sad, little children laying on the floor, little girls crying because their stomachs hurt so much from hunger. To see them smile when we handed them food, you would have thought we were performing a miracle, and maybe to them, thanks to our CHRF donors, we were. The mothers and children we so grateful and kept saying thank you. I told them that it was the CHRF donors who made this Christmas feeding possible. I wish I could somehow explain just how much this meant to them. They wanted to make sure that I expressed their gratitude to all of our CHRF donors who have made this Christmas miracle possible.” Thanks to CHRF donors, this Christmas those children know that there are people in the world who care about them and who will not let them go unfed. On behalf of those wonderful children and the CHRF team and staff we thank you for helping us help those children! And a very Merry Christmas!
This is an inspiring report. At least someone is doing something about these neglected children. a bowl of food isn’t just another meal to these children it’s a life and death, sickness or disease experience. Good for you for doing something to make a difference