 One such school was Bricourt, located near Cayes where Child Sponsorship supports some of its students. When a few Child Sponsorship Committee members visited Bricourt in the Spring of 2011, the school was not able to use several classrooms. Despite the school's severe earthquake damage, the administrator revealed another concern that was even more significant and challenging.
Bricourt is situated between Cayes and Bonne Fin, home of Hospital Lumiere. The region is very mountainous and many Bricourt students walk up to two hours each way out of the mountains to attend school. And sadly, many of them don't eat breakfast before coming to school . . . and may not have dinner available when they get home. The school administration shared that learning was difficult in this environment, where the students' energy and attention were diminished by extreme hunger.
An idea was born. Rather than just providing funding for books, uniforms and tuition, should the committee consider providing a school lunch program so the children have a better opportunity for physical development and learning enhancement? How many meals would be required? What would such a program cost? Who would administer it? Who would pay for it? Would it be sustainable?
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 A sub-committee was formed and tasked with designing a pilot program to develop a school lunch opportunity for the Bricourt school. An arrangement was made to provide Tender Mercies™ packets as the nutritional foundation for the program. In addition, partnerships were formed with local farmers and markets to provide rice, garlic, hot peppers and cooking oil to complete the mixture.
 After considerable effort to coordinate the logistics of all of the ingredients, including securing a warehouse to store and protect this valuable commodity and recruiting a local World Relief volunteer to manage the process, a pilot school lunch program was initiated in the Fall of 2011 for a couple of hundred students at Bricourt.
The pilot program was so well-received that it has now been expanded to cover four schools (Bricourt, Massey, Simon and Torbeck), serving 600 students. For the 2014-2015 school year, 108,000 meals will be required to serve 600 students over 180 school days.
 Since each packet of Tender Mercies includes four servings, 27,000 packets were assembled in Morton, IL and shipped to Bluffton, IN where they were packaged for export to Haiti. The cost of the program: $0.35 per meal or $63.00 to serve one student for one year.
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After three years of success at Bricourt, here are some comments from representatives of the school:
 Administrator: "This work has a great value before God. We feel that the school lunch program is a good way to help the children learn better. Food plays a big role in learning."
Teacher: "We noticed once it was 10:00 a.m., the children could not hear anything. They used to sleep on the bench and were distracted when they did not eat before coming to school. Now they follow in class with eyes open and are more interested in learning."
Parent: "Your school lunch helps me because I don't have any food to give my children before school. I have four children in the school and they really like and always eat the food. It helps them to learn well."
Third Grade Student: "Without food, our body cannot work... if our body can't work, our mind can't keep anything either. We are encouraged to go to school, because we know we will find food to eat."
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 Potential expansion of the school lunch program to the other 125 schools we serve in Haiti is a daunting challenge. Please pray that the sub-committee will have wisdom to determine how to proceed and our brotherhood will be moved to help so students we serve can optimize their educational opportunity and experience the love of the Lord in their daily lives.
Please consider becoming a sponsor today
You can make a difference in the life of a child in Haiti.
Contact our office at:
PO Box 36
Morton, IL 61550
309-266-6080 Phone
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