This week my family and many others from Riverdale Church have been participating in Hope for Dinner, a program of Venture Expeditions. Participants spend this week before Thanksgiving eating rice and beans for dinner each night, and they give the money saved by this basic menu to Venture. Venture then partners with Feed My Starving Children to provide meals for children in Burma and Thailand.

Here’s the breakdown: by switching out a typical dinner for rice and beans, an American family saves about $4 per person. That $4 is enough to provide 40 meals through Venture and FMSC. Do you know what this means???  The cost of a $5 foot long could feed 50 people! Talk about loaves and fishes!

I have long had a passion for the cause of global hunger. So much depends on childhood nutrition, and malnourished kids can have setbacks in physical and cognitive development that stunt them for life. People who are starving don’t believe that God cares about them. This cannot be tolerated. I am going to do what I can for these precious people. Will you join me?

If rice and beans isn’t your thing, there are plenty of other ways to cut your personal costs, freeing up monies that can be used for the fight against global hunger.
– Give up drinking soda or alcohol (or both)
– Go meatless for a week
– Eat only the food you have in your house for a week.  No grocery shopping and my pantry finally gets cleaned up?  Win-win!   – this idea came from a friend at church
– Give up eating out for a week (or more) – one dinner out (sit-down style) for my little family is about $60. We can eat at home for $10 or less, freeing up $50 or 500 meals via Venture!
– Take up the regular practice of Food Shelf Fridays.  (Learn more about it on my About page)

Do you have more ideas?  Leave a comment!