OCA helps feed hungry Haitians at Feed the Need event
Chickamauga’s Oakwood Christian Academy held a different type of party this past Friday and the entire school was invited.
A “packing party”, as part of a Feed the Need event, saw hundreds of OCA students, teachers and parents work in the school’s gym to prepare and pack meals for families in Haiti.
Various stations throughout the gym saw students and others associated with the school hard at work with different elements of the process.
“It’s exciting to see people get excited about helping others,” said OCA’s Charme Ray, one of those on hand to take part in the event. “Each bag we fill has vitamins, vegetables, soy and rice in it and each bag will provide six different meals for families. We’ll finish up with 3,000 bags, which will be picked up on Monday (Oct. 16) and will be shipped directly to Haiti. From our hands to theirs.”
Each student worked for an hour at the packing party after watching a video on the Feed the Need program. The video explained the purpose of the event and the procedure for prepping the food.
According to its website, Feed the Need is the premier major fundraising event for the Champion Group, an organization based in Alabama.
The Champion Group touts on its website that over 2,600 different fundraising events that they direct, along with golf tournaments, dinner auctions and clay shooting events, have raised over $100,000,000 for their clients, which include private and public schools, Christian ministries and nonprofit organizations.
The Champion Group provided the ingredients needed to fill each bag. Some students were in charge of affixing nutritional information stickers on the front of each bag, while older students in the school took turns filling the bags through a funnel and weighing each one for uniformity.
The bags were then vacuum-sealed and passed down the line, bucket brigade-style by the younger students, to those boxing up the bags for shipment. Some students even wrote inspirational messages and Bible verses on the boxes.
All those involved in the process, and even those simply there to observe, were required to wear hair nets for sanitary purposes, while latex gloves were required for those handling the food itself.
“Our preschool students, even as young as three years old, all the way to our (high school) seniors, everyone is getting involved,” Ray explained. “Even parents and teachers are also helping so everyone has something they are doing. They are all praying, working together and enjoying it. Everyone is having fun.
“When I told one of the kids that his hour was up, he said he couldn’t believe how fast the time flew by. But time does fly when you are having fun.”
The food packaged at OCA will be delivered and distributed to families in Haiti, but the organization also makes food distributions for families and orphans in Jamaica, Sri Lanka, Kenya and Bangladesh, while a smaller portion of the food bags remain in the United States to help locally.
While the OCA community event was about helping others not as fortunate in another country, it was also about helping the school directly.
“This is also a fundraiser for us here at the school,” Ray said. “While most of the proceeds are going to help people in Haiti, it’s also helping our mission here at the school as well. Families and students raised money and we had some corporate sponsors that also gave to help us reach our $50,000 goal. Being a private school, we have to raise our own funds and there are projects and many needs that this will help us with financially.”
However, Ray said the main purpose was to have a chance to share the Gospel with those in another land.
“Each meal is an opportunity for us to share Jesus with each family,” she added. “That was our goal and our main purpose. We wanted to meet needs, but also to share what we think is the good news.”