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Food Distribution in Honduras
The population of Honduras in 2007 was estimated at 7.5 million with over 22 percent of the overall Honduran population suffering from serious malnutrition. Chronic malnourishment accompanies the levels of poverty and in the highest poverty areas of Honduras, such as the northeast, over 30% of children suffer from malnutrition related to food shortage. UNICEF reports that 25% of Honduran children under five suffer from moderate to severe stunting.
Good health and education are the two things that dramatically change the entire life of a child from poverty to independence. In northeastern Honduras there is a 30% malnutrition rate, and poor school attendance is often due to a lack of food and limited agricultural production affected by flooding year after year.
In many cases, the meal offered at school is the only nutrition available to children in these targeted areas. In other words, it is the only meal they will have the whole day. These meals also act as an incentive for parents to send their children to school.
Bless the Children’s food distribution strategy focuses on the provision of prepared daily meals in rural schools and the distribution of take-home rations for students’ families and to homes for orphans and vulnerable children in northeastern Honduras. Hospitals, nutritional centers for toddlers and infants, homes for the elderly, the handicapped and severely impoverished rural villages also receive food when funding and donated food is available.
Daily mothers arrive at our Bless the Children Honduras office asking for help to feed their children. Please make a donation today to help feed them.
Food Grant
In 2008 Bless the Children was honored to be awarded a food grant of approximately 4 million meals in this time of international food crises by the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) International Food Relief Partnership. We distributed this food aid to abandoned, orphaned and vulnerable children, their families and in their communities throughout the north of Honduras, Central America. Food distribution was coordinated with: relief agencies, police and fire personnel, community and religious leaders, orphanages, schools, elderly homes and hospitals.
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