FILE 2010
Helen Little, center back, has been volunteering in Haiti for 25 years. A member of Horne Memorial in Clayton, she began bringing church members to Haiti on mission trips and helped found the Ryan Epps Home For Children even before the earthquake.
CLAYTON -- When Helen Little began volunteering in Haiti 25 years ago, she didn't know she would one day have 14 churches and eight civics clubs behind her to continue the efforts of bringing hope and nourishment to a small Haitian orphanage and school.
Yvon Pierre, the director of the Ryan Epps Home for Children, a church, school and orphanage in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, is in Clayton this week winning hearts and minds for the beginning of an ongoing campaign to bring hundreds of thousands of meals to Haiti.
The meals, to be packaged with a series of three events starting this Saturday, will feed 18 children in the orphanage, some of the home's 180 church attendees, the associated school of 170, andother malnourished peopleon the small Caribbean island south of Cuba.
But Little, devoted as she is, didn't plan the Stop Hunger Now campaign all by herself.
Stop Hunger Now
Tom Ricks isn't the kind of man who's "plugged in" to the community. At least that's what he'll tell you.
But after going to church with Helen Little for as long as he has, Ricks couldn't help but be touched by her story of the children so full of hope and life regardless of their struggles.
"The faith they have in the circumstances they're in puts us to shame," Ricks says of the Haitians.
So, with honest tears on reserve, Ricks traveled to nearly every church and civic organization in Clayton between the summer of 2011 and today, passionately explaining the Haitian cause and wiping his eyes, the tears reflecting his personal pain for the suffering of his fellow man in Haiti.
"I'm just the one that's bringing this to people's attention," Ricks says. And he's not the only one who's been touched by the situation since the earthquake. Lots of area churches and civics groups have already visited Haiti on mission trips, especially since 2010, and now, around the second anniversary of the earthquake.Ricks asks everyone he meets a simple question: don't you think that if these churches and civic groups would join Horne Memorial in a Stop Hunger Now event, it would not only send much-needed food to the hungry in Haiti - more than a single church could send alone - but would bring Clayton together across religious denominations, race and socioeconomic brackets?
Fourteen churches and eight civics clubs in the Clayton area will participate.
Russell Cotton, an associate minister at Mount Vernon Christian Church, has been meeting with Ricks at the Coffee Mill every Friday morning since Ricks came into his church one summer day and told Cotton that this mission was their chance for black and white congregations in Clayton to work together.
Cotton already knows Ricks well, patiently waiting for him to wipe his eyes when he gets passionate about the Haitian people. He said he's excited for his church to work with churches like Horne Memorial and First Baptist on this and other causes, because pooling their resources can help all of them achieve more.
"I'm convinced God guided me to meet these people," Ricks says of Cotton and other pastors he's met during his journey with Stop Hunger Now. "It's whether our hearts are open (to the cause), and that's the limit of the factor."
How many meals?
This isn't the first time that Horne Memorial has embarked upon a Stop Hunger Now effort. It packaged 30,000 meals with the help of Clayton high School students last year.
But Ricks realized that 30,000 meals aren't enough. The orphanage alone would need 1,512 meals a month.
Ricks took it upon himself to convince Clayton that it could feed Ryan Epps and surrounding communities year-round if they can get the momentum to package 250,000 meals each quarter.
"The goal is to do it whenever places want to and can do it," Ricks explained. "We want to do this every year and make it an enjoyable experience."
But it's expensive. For $12,500, a group can package 50,000 meals. But to specify where it's going? That costs even more.
"We had been doing Stop Hunger Now for a lot of years but they just sent it wherever," Little explained. But if the church can fill a whole shipping crate - 250,000 meals worth - they can ship it themselves.
Thanks to Little's network with the Ryan Epps Home and Pierre, the meals can bypass the often corrupt port in Port-au-Prince, and Pierre's network can distribute the meals itself.
"He's worked so hard to get this done," Little said of Ricks. "We're going to have to pay the shipping and the customs, but we can designate where we want it."
The goal is to raise $17,500 for 70,000 meals for the package date on Jan. 28, $25,000 for 100,000 meals on February 4, and $21,000 for 84,000 meals on February 23.
But with the Woman's Club, five area Rotary Clubs, American Legion Post 518, and 14 churches from across the socioeconomic spectrum, Ricks thinks they can manage.
"I keep asking, you think that's the best you can do? And I ask them how they can reach the number I put down for them," Ricks explained of the churches and groups who signed on to participate.
And Ricks' vision for the collaboration of the Clayton community to soften the pain of Haiti's people? It's coming true.
