Runda Feeding Program

This past Sunday Interact was part of the Runda Feeding Program for the first time this semester. Since I had never attended before i was quite excited about this visit. All the people that were going to join met at Java before we drove to Runda where it was being held. This was slightly disorganized and people were not sure of the exact time to meet and then we barely had enough cars to take everyone. It is really hard to organize large groups and it is easy to just assume that everything will work out but for next time this issues should perhaps be dealt with.

ISK together with a few other people had donated money which payed for the food brought in. This included LOTS of bread, fruit, milk, cookies etc. At arrival we worked together to unpack all the food and prepare for the children to come. There were many people there, both students from our school and other that had offered to help. Everyone was willing to assist and so it got quite crowded. I think it still was far from chaotic and people helped each other. It was great having people from different grades there so that you got to know people that you don't usually hang out with.

When the little children arrived we were distributed at different stations to be able to to quickly give each child of everything. I was part of the bread station and it was quite fascinating to see how all that bread disappeared in less than 30 minutes. There were children of all ages and some carried younger siblings with them. We were told that for some of the kids, this was the only real meal they would get the entire week! This mad it extremely hard to be consistent and not give extra bread. Unfortunately the bread was still unevenly distributed since the first kids strictly only got 6 pieces of our bread and by the end we realized there was so much left that the last people got whole loafs of bread.

Afterwards the whole yard was filled with children (and some adults too) eating and I have to say it was quite moving. Then they left and we packed up the empty boxes and bags before we listened to the prayer of one man there before leaving. Even though this of course something good to have done it also makes you think about how much left there is to do in the world. Those kids are just a tiny fraction of hungry people in the world and it is hard to picture how much money, time and willingness is needed to fix this, maybe it is impossible. Still it is important to do as much as we can and help organizations that really want to make a difference in the world.