Haitian orphans to receive Stop Hunger Now meals

CLAYTON -- Once Yvon Pierre returns to Haiti this week, he'll be able to tell his orphanage about more than a hundred or so people whom he met in Clayton, North Carolina.

He'll tell the children that these apparent strangers have made it a priority to ease their lives' struggles, if only a little.

"It's heartwarming to see that many people involved in it," said Al Carpenter as volunteers swept up grains of rice at the end of the Stop Hunger Now event at Hocutt Baptist this past Saturday. Carpenter is president of the board for the Ryan Epps Home in Haiti where Pierre runs the school, church and home for children in need.

Despite the event's location, Horne Memorial United Methodist is where the Stop Hunger Now campaign began, with church and Rotary member Tom Ricks. Despite his age, and the fact that he literally raised $10,000 to organize the 40,146-meal packaging event, Ricks happily put on his hairnet, got down on all fours to sweep up rice, and lifted heavy boxes of meals into the Stop Hunger Now delivery truck.

It hasn't been an easy task, but the Haitian contagion seems to have caught. Fourteen churches and eight civic groups signed on to help package more than 250,000 meals by the end of February and send them to the children's home and people in need in the surrounding villages.

And it's the first time that Rachel Zelibor, a Stop Hunger Now event coordinator based in Raleigh, saw the meals' foreign recipient actually help package his own meals.

"It brings it home to people," Zeilbor said, meal-counting clipboard in hand. "They can actually see who is getting the food."

Al Carpenter's wife, Valerie, has been going to Haiti on mission trips since 1985, when she was interpreting French with a medical team and met 19-year-old Pierre, asking him to interpret her French just one more step toward the locally spoken Creole.

Ever since, the Carpenters have been as much like Pierre's adoptive parents as they can be. They've been driving him to and from his "begging" appointments at area churches and civic groups, and they participated in Valerie Carpenter's first Stop Hunger Now meal packaging event.

"My presence drove them to death," said Pierre, as he joked with Al Carpenter in the church parking lot beside the Stop Hunger Now delivery truck.

Pierre looked pleased with himself. He had just made a clever, English-language pun, poking fun at the Carpenters for having to drive him everywhere, which in turn drove them crazy; when they first met, Pierre didn't speak any English.

On their way

Once all the meals are packaged, they will be sent to Port-au-Prince, where Pierre himself will meet the cargo and help distribute it to three groups including his own, which will receive 95,000 of the 285,000 meals Ricks hopes each of the three packaging events can produce.

Although they fell short of Rick's 70,000-meal goal, the volunteers that showed up didn't want to leave after the first shift ended and the second crew came in after lunch.

From high school students to older church members to young families, folks seemed to have a good time measuring bags of rice and seasoning.

One group in particular couldn't hide with its unending smiles how much fun they had working with a crowd whose arms were as wide-open as any crowd willing to spend six hours on a Saturday packaging meals for the hungry.

The New Hope Free Will Independent Baptist Church in Raleigh brought a group of men from The Healing Center's men's home in Raleigh, a rehabilitation and community assistance program for homeless and formerly homeless men.

"People don't' have time to help them get back involved," Ricks said of people like Leon Parker, a friendly fellow who was working as hard as he could in his group of five volunteers from the Healing Place.

Even when Zelibor called time on the event, they couldn't stop working as they rushed to finish packing a few more meals, looking like students rushing to finish an essay question on an exam that's already ended.

"They came with their own church. They want to give back," Ricks said. "This is truly an event where all of us can work together."