Letters from the President - International Samaritan

When Nothing’s For Dinner

Our team meeting this past week was a tough one. Each week, we discuss the 100 or so “connections” that our team members recorded the week before about their one-on-one meetings with our Samaritan Scholars or their parents around the world. These conversations tend to be either challenging or uplifting, but last week’s connections were just unsettling. More and more of our scholars’ families are returning to dumpsites to find food to eat. We can’t look past that.

Here’s an excerpt from a connection that one of our team members, Laura, made in Villa Guadalupe:

There are days when things go so badly that Rosa’s* grandma has to resort to bringing food that she finds in the garbage dump, and it is not in good condition. She is aware that Rosa must have gotten sick from food that she found on Saturday, and she knows that it was not in the best condition. But she said that she does not know what else to do.

She feels terrible for having to give that type of food to her grandchildren. She knows that God does not abandon them, but she feels that these moments are really difficult and there are days when she breaks down.

Laura took this photo of the chicken that Rosa’s grandmother found in the dump.

Our Health and Wellness Specialist in Ethiopia, Selam K., wrote this in a recent connection:

Amira* asked me for a multivitamin. When I asked her why, what she said broke my heart.

“There is a scarcity of food at home. The price of Teff and other commodities has skyrocketed, leading us to exhaust the last piece of Teff we had a week ago. There are kind teachers in our school who buy lunch for us struggling students three times a week. We are about ten in number. The meal typically consists of bread with stew. I thought that by taking multivitamins, I could at least stay healthy. Today, I had to pack the bread for later, so that I won’t get so hungry when I study late at night.”

She opened her bag to show me the loaf of bread. I couldn’t meet her eyes directly. I felt so bad.

From Erika, our Program Director in San Pedro Sula, Honduras:

Today, Mrs. Guzman* asked us for permission to take her daughter Carmen to work at the garbage dump, because the situation at home is very difficult. She and her husband work inside the dump all day to be able to sell recyclables, and they are also bringing food home from the landfill because sometimes they go to bed without eating.

There were a handful more like these, and all these connections were just in the last week alone!

Hunger and malnutrition are problems we had actually solved for 30 straight months after the pandemic began. With your support, we were providing roughly $100 worth of food per month to all 900 of our Samaritan Scholar families to help them survive the impact of the pandemic on the informal economy.

Give Now For Food Support

In those two and a half years, you could literally see the difference in the texture of their skin. Their teachers marveled at how healthy they had become.

Last year, we reduced the food support we were providing by 75%, and gave our team leaders discretion to use the remaining funds to help families with the most need. We have learned that this is not enough to stave off malnourishment, and we are determined to do more.

No child should ever have to work in a dump to survive. And nobody of any age should ever have to look for food in a dump. These are the beliefs we live by for the people in every International Samaritan community.

In discussing these challenges with our Board of Trustees, we have decided to increase our commitment to support food and other urgent needs in our communities.

So now we turn to you, friends and supporters of these communities, to ask you to consider supporting the cost of a food basket each month for the rest of the year. Would you prayerfully consider becoming a monthly donor? If you give $100 per month, you will give a family a lifeline of strength and hope each month.

You can help! Become a monthly supporter.

They need you desperately. We are praying for miracles for them. The smile on this scholar’s face from a connection this week is the difference you can make for others today.

Using the critical needs fund, team members were able to provide food for this scholar and her family.

Laura wrote:
Our scholar couldn’t stop smiling when she saw so much food! She said that they were finally going to eat well. For her, this represents that God is always at their side and that there are people who really care about their well-being and look for ways to help them with whatever they need, from their education to their health.

*Names were changed to protect their privacy.

Mike Tenbusch, President

Mike joined International Samaritan in 2018 after two decades of leading social change in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan. He’s a University of Michigan Law grad and author of The Jonathan Effect: Helping Kids and Schools Win the Battle Against Poverty. He and his wife, Maritza, have three children who keep them young.