Provide nutrition for 500 families in South Africa

Dear, dear friends

Thank you so, so much for choosing this project to send your donation to.  Every single dollar makes a difference here and our appreciation for it increases all the time.

Measuring the true impact of your contributions is a complex task, for how does one even begin to express the relief and gratitude of the people on the receiving end of the daily bread and soup line? 

The physical act of stilling the hunger plays only a small (but vital) part in alleviating the dreadful effects of poverty and related illnesses.  The American Psychological Association lists the following harmful effects of hunger in children:

• Low food security and hunger can contribute to toxic stress – the strong, unrelieved activation of the body’s stress management system.
• A lack of healthy food can lead to malnutrition, health problems caused by a nutritionally-deficient diet.
• We all have a limited cognitive bandwidth. People tend to spend their limited mental reserves on resources that they lack, and so hungry children focus on food, which can lead to neglect of other areas of life such as schoolwork.
• Studies show that food insufficiency is associated with higher prevalence of poor health conditions, including stomachaches, headaches, and colds; and that severe hunger can predict chronic illness among both preschooland school-age children.
• Hunger-related toxic stress can negatively affect brain development, learning, information processing, and academic achievement in children.
• Malnutrition in the first years of life is especially harmful, impacting physical growth, decreasing resistance to disease, limiting the size and functioning of children’s brain structures, and stunting intellectual capacity.
• Severe hunger is associated with anxiety and depression among children.  Research shows that families’ lack of sufficient food, irrespective of their income, is associated with depressive disorders and suicidality in adolescents.
• Children may feel ashamed and isolated by the stigma associated with their lack of food.

Your donations not only help to feed families, it prevents long term psychological effects, increases brain development, prevents illness and creates feelings of being cared for.  Thank you for restoring hope and dignity to the people of Missionvale and for allowing them the opportunity of a future.  The best gift you can give a child is a happy childhood and you are all an active part of that – THANK YOU!

Links:

• Our website
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