Food for The Poor is giving thanks once more

BY MICHAEL THOMAS

It’s Thanksgiving season once more and Food For The Poor Canada (FFPC) gave back in a big way by hosting its sixth annual Thanksgiving luncheon on October 20^th, 2019.

The event was held at the prestigious Toronto Hunt at 1355 Kingston Road in Toronto, and the purpose of the luncheon was to raise funds in order to complete a building project in Derac, Haiti. The Executive Director of Food For The Poor Haiti, Bishop Oge Beauvoir, was on hand and provided the keynote address.

Beauvoir was born in Haiti but received his education in Montreal. He was ordained into the Anglican Church of Canada and lived in Montreal before he moved back to Haiti where he now lives and leads a team of 300 Haitians on the ground for Food For The Poor. The Bishop shared some of his thoughts with Toronto Caribbean Newspaper before the event. Beauvoir told Toronto Caribbean Newspaper, “Once it involves helping the poor then it’s a worthy cause and I encourage Canadians to come out, be a part of this and help.”

When asked about how he leads the team in Haiti Beauvoir replied, “I am a worker also and we have two parts that we concentrate on, one is to give and the other is to develop the community. We have a feeding center in Port-au-Prince where we feed almost 900 families daily; we are involved in: building homes for the poor, animal raising, farming and assisting the fishermen  by providing them with boats and all the tools they need to succeed.”

Speaking of success, the bishop told a story of a girl from the orphanage run by Food For The Poor who went on to study agricultural science and has returned to give back to the community. “All this and more would not be possible if it was not for the generosity of the Canadian public,” Beauvoir said.

Here are some facts about Food For The Poor:

• The organization was started in the United States over 30 years ago by a Jamaican named Ferdinand Mahfood. Mahfood started working with a host of charities in Jamaica before a priest approached him and ask him if he wouldn’t mind moving to Haiti where the need for help was greater than Jamaica, and like they say the rest is history.

Today his organization operates in 17 different countries in the Caribbean and Latin America. Food For The Poor also has approximately: 300 staff in the USA, 120 staff in Jamaica, 300 staff in Haiti, and 100 staff in Guyana. The organization also collaborates with like-minded partners in other countries as well.

Food For The Poor feeds around 500,000 to a million people in the Caribbean and Latin America every day, and Haiti off course gets the largest amount of help. The organization would like to thank the government of Taiwan for its help in the form of 30 containers of rice monthly; the rest of the food comes from smaller donors and purchases.

Canada’s Largest Caribbean Newspaper (Toronto Caribbean Newspaper) spoke with Samantha Mahfood Executive Director of Food For The Poor Canada about her role and vision for the organization. When asked to describe a day in her life she said, “My day consists of talking to donors and thanking them for all they do. I have a great team which I work with to make sure they are supported; our people work in: projects, shipping, marketing, and donor stewardship, so it is making sure everyone does their job well and gets the support they need.”

Mahfood told Toronto Caribbean Newspaper,” One of the things that Food For The Poor is really good at is responding to hurricanes and earthquakes because we are established in so many countries, and we already have the infrastructure for the distribution. We have the partners who can help us rebuild and give out water and blankets. For instance, in Haiti we already have 3,000 recipient organizations, so we don’t have to figure out who we are going to give the food to. We have things in place so that when a hurricane or an earthquake hits, we have the ability to get an emergency response immediately to the country.”

As to what is her long-term vision for the organization Mahfood answered, “Many Canadians still have not heard about Food For The Poor and the great work that we do, I need that to change.”

For folks wanting to donate or just looking to learn more about Food For The Poor, visit  www.FoodForThePoor.ca