Fourth Sunday Hunger Fund 2006 Report

Members of the Nassau Church community contributed a record-breaking $37,088 to the Fourth Sunday Hunger Offering in 2006. Five organizations around the world shared these gifts equally.

For 2007 we are expanding out support to six organizations. The Fourth Sunday Hunger Offering with the shared with the following organizations:

The Trenton Area Soup Kitchen. TASK uses Nassau’s contribution to help provide more than 3,000 meals a week to an ever-growing number of working poor people. TASK Escher Street serves mid-day meals Mondays through Fridays, and dinners Mondays through Thursdays. The newer South Trenton Soup Kitchen is open for dinner three times a week. Members of the Nassau community help at Escher Street on the third Tuesday of each month.

The Center for Christian Services in Guatemala. CEDESCRI teaches Maya farmers the techniques of sustainable development and helps them create new markets for their crops. At its Rural Life and Technology Training Center, farm families learn to use corn-grinding mills, composting latrines and stoves that require less fuel and produce less smoke than traditional ones. Farm products, such as jam and soap, are marketed at four new stores.

Patan Hospital near Katmandu, Nepal. "We have a Nutrition Fund where we keep all of the generous contributions from Nassau Presbyterian Church," writes R. P. Prajapati, the hospital's chief executive officer. "This fund provides nourishing food to the malnourished patients and the poor patients who cannot afford to pay for meals."

Immaculada Concepcion Community Center, Manila, Philippines. The center offers nutrition and educational programs to 120 malnourished children each year in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. Thirty children who participated in the programs ten years ago now work at the center. Divided into three teams, they help the volunteer parents plan meals and buy food at the market, help with the cooking, and take care of the garden and assist the teachers.

The Uniting Reformed Church of Stellenbosch, South Africa. Funds from Nassau Church pay for three feeding programs: Meals and educational activities serve more than 200 very poor, neglected and often-hungry schoolchildren during January (summer holiday) and July (winter holiday). Stellenbosch Feeding Action feeds between 600 and 1,200 children and adults five days a week through 13 soup kitchens. The Stellenbosch Abba Project addresses the combination of poverty, hunger and drug abuse among teenagers and children.

Women for Change, a nongovernmental organization that works with community-based groups in remote rural areas of Zambia, is a new recipient of hunger funds. With this help, people in Mapoko (population about 6,000) will drill their own deep well to provide a steady supply of clean, safe water. The new well will enable girls to attend school instead of spending hours each day carrying water. Until the borehole is completed, however, women and children must continue to walk six miles to draw water from shallow wells that flood during the rainy season and hold little water the rest of the year. These unprotected water sources pose serious health threats from water-borne diseases

Another important part of Nassau Church’s hunger program is through its covenant membership in Bread for the World. This nationwide citizen’s movement seeks to end hunger in the United States by lobbying our members of Congress.