‘You can go mad from hunger’ — Team Rubicon UK joins up with Feed the Hungry in Haiti
TRUK is working with local partners and Feed the Hungry to build school kitchens in remote parts of Haiti. Find out more here.
The poor economic situation in Haiti has led to widespread poverty and hunger.
Over 100,000 children are suffering from malnutrition and 1-in-3 children have stunted growth due to lack of food, according to the World Food Programme.
To help tackle this, Team Rubicon UK is working in partnership with Feed The Hungry and alongside local skilled workforces to construct kitchens in up to 10 schools and orphanages in Pignon, northern Haiti.
This means that children will get at least one nutritious meal per day, helping to improve health and education.
Pastor Jephthe Lucien, TRUK’s in-country partner, says: “Feeding the kids is one thing, but the conditions in which the food is being cooked is really sad.”
He adds: “I am fortunate that the schools I oversee are the ones that have the privilege of feeding kids.
Some of the kids refer to it as ‘food school’. Children at other places go to school with an empty stomach and go back home with an empty stomach.
We say all the time that an empty stomach does not have an ear. Kids are so excited to know that they can go to school and find some food.”
Principal Lamy Luckson was just 19 when he became head of Mayaya School. Now 22, he wants to give something back after the good education he received from the local Pastor.
Speaking to TRUK, Lamy said: “When I was growing up, a Pastor from the local church gave me a good education and now I want to do the same thing,
“When children are fed at school they learn better. If they are not fed well they fall asleep.
When I was a little boy, I didn’t really have the opportunity to be fed at school like these children today. You can go mad from hunger.”
He finishes by saying: “Stay doing what you’re doing, it’s very very important work that Team Rubicon is doing here.”
Team Rubicon UK is helping to coordinate and build several new kitchen sites, with Greyshirt volunteers taking part in both construction and logistics roles.
One of the many issues TRUK’s Incident Commander Tim Wright faces is ensuring the sites have the resources they need to finish the job. “This becomes more complicated as the sites spread out and get further from the accommodation,” Tim says.
Greyshirt Mark Butler, who is working on the construction at Mayaya School has been impressed by the Haitian ability to ‘improvise, adapt and overcome’;
“The local workers’ ingenuity at fashioning tools is boundless.
Their use of available resources to overcome problems would be a good example to the UK where we often find complicated answers to simple problems.”
Team Rubicon UK is working with Feed the Hungry in Haiti as part of a sustainable development project.
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