Provide nutrition for 500 families in South Africa

This postcard is written by Chi Nguyen, our In-The-Field Representative who will be traveling to the nine countries of Southern Africa to meet and work with our partner organizations.

On Monday, March 17th, I was privileged to meet Linda van Oudheusden who gave me a grand tour of Missionvale Care Centre and all of its accomplishments thus far - and a grand tour it was! Missionvale Care Centre, 26 years and running, now has quite a few impressive achievements to tout, such as two health clinics on the grounds, an assembly hall for HIV/AIDS support groups as well as community events and recreational activities, a farming project, and a sizable food program for the local impoverished community, just to name a few.

Student volunteers from America were in the kitchen, busily packing food parcels of sugar, tuna, beans, tea packets, and more as rows and rows of people sat in line for their food parcels just outside. Linda and the founder of Missionvale Care Centre, Sister Ethel, tell me that their biggest challenge is to get donors to believe that food parcels are a necessary component of the program as a whole. They say that too often, donors believe that food parcels are handouts rather than a hand up, wanting instead to donate to education, HIV/AIDS medication, or the provision of life skills, but Linda and Sister Ethel reason: how can one learn and progress if one does not have enough food to first survive?

Sister Ethel shares a story close to her heart, telling me that years ago, before the food program had started, a member of the community with HIV/AIDS came to Sister Ethel and told her how sick she was feeling. Sister Ethel pleaded with her to take her medications, but she said she couldn't, that the medication made her feel sick. Sister Ethel pleaded and pleaded, but the community member said that she couldn't, that the medication only made her feel worse. She eventually passed away.

Sister Ethel was determined to live a few days in this woman's shoes. She began taking the medication herself, on an empty stomach, to figure out what went wrong. She then become violently ill herself, incapable of functioning in her normal daily activities. She then knew that she had to start a food program.

The food parcel gives the families in community the energy to grow, learn, thrive, and contribute to the community. The mothers can now tend after their children, the children can now focus in school, the women and men can now contribute to the farming projects in the community. The food program is a crucial piece in the structure of Missionvale Care Centre, and is a dynamic demonstration of the fact that one must be well before one is capable of doing well.