Day 11: Rotten cabbage

Today I was able to identify with another struggle faced by many living in extreme poverty: rotting food. Unfortunately I used some bad cabbage in my soup today and paid the consequences. Just tossed out my remaining stock of cabbage; not sure what went wrong with it, but it just tasted awful today and severely upset my stomach. So for dinner I had a simple rice and pasta dish to keep it mellow.

As Murphy's Law would have it, I spilled half of my pasta ration into my dirty sink when draining it. Along with that and the loss of the one dollar's worth of cabbage, I'm now officially living on less than $1/day. I can only imagine similar setbacks that those in the developing world face such as losses from natural disasters, crime, or lack of refrigeration.

It's hard to do fundraising on a weekend, so I will pick back up on my charitable goal campaign tomorrow with a renewed determination to meet my goal. 

However, I wanted to celebrate a small victory that underscores the power of one small recurring donation. After my announcement last night that we are opening up our "Monthly Donor Heart-Chart" to receive recurring donations of any amount, we had someone who is already sponsoring two of our orphans stretch to give another $10/mo!

Here's the kicker:

When coupled with the profits and pantry-stocking yields of our farmlands, this $10/mo will allow us to provide about 30 fresh-cooked meals for an orphan or human trafficking survivor in one of our programs. That's a nice return! Donating to our work is like seeing your generosity multiplied! 

Now, to get the $36/mo heart filled, I just need someone willing to donate $26/mo or two people willing to do $13/mo.

We can piece this together and watch the exponential effects of a small group of people coming together to achieve a goal for an impact far greater than if we were each working alone.

I'm dedicating day 11 to the children in our Kampala, Uganda "Children's Hope Center" school where children from this slum settlement come to receive a primary education and also receive nutritious breakfast and lunch during school days, free of charge.

I do these daily dedications to remind myself, and to show you, the power of what the "Heart-Chart" is all about, it's about empowering hope. We can give a child hope, but if we don't actually empower that hope with action, then the hope dies. We have done so much to reach that end, including investing over a half-million dollars into on-field small business enterprise over the years, to equip our teams with their own fund-generating tools to meet us in the middle with their own profits and food stocks! So we're not looking for hand-outs, rather hand-ups.

These are some of my photos of the students from my last visit to Uganda in February. As you can see, the program runs on a shoestring budget and we are praying for more consistent support to ensure that it is properly funded.

Charitable goal update. For those of you just tuning in, I'll recap what I'm trying to achieve with the "Monthly Donor Heart-Chart" and my goal of finding 50 new sponsors for these "hearts" which I like to think of as representing lives being transformed and, ultimately, saved.

Why am I seeking monthly donors? The orphan care, child labor response, and human trafficking response programs we've pioneered at Peace Gospel and She Has Hope— while sustained in part by small business enterprise— need charitable support to be fully sustained. The budgets of these programs have fixed, monthly expenses. Thus, while one-time donations are deeply appreciated, it's the monthly donations that give us something to count on and plan with. Therefor, long-term, they're the most powerful.

If you're willing to make a small monthly sacrifice of any amount to help ensure that the following merciful actions are fully funded each month, I would be grateful for your partnership with me in this effort. With your help, our monthly budget enables us to…

• Provide resident care for 290 orphans in 11 homes in Asia and Africa
  
• Operate 4 schools and 4 after-school care programs reaching over 1000 children
  
• Serve approx. 50,000 fresh meals to children in our programs
  
• Train 100s of girls how to avoid the dangers of human trafficking
  
• House, rehabilitate and empower 20 girls recovering from human trafficking

On to what I was able to create with just $1 worth of food today. I had to go easy on dinner because my stomach was still in bad shape by dinnertime. The simple starchy meal helped settle my stomach and now I'm doing better.

Click or tap on image to enlarge...

Breakfast. ▼

  
Lunch. ▼

Dinner. ▼

Take Action!

1) Please consider helping me reach my goal to find 50 new "Sustainers"— donors willing to give a small amount each month toward our work helping vulnerable children and trafficking survivors. Learn more and sign up here!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to the work of Peace Gospel's programs helping orphans, at-risk children of the slums, and human trafficking survivors.

3) If you're compelled by my effort here, please share it with friends. One of the main goals is awareness. So if you can help with that, huge.

4) Leave me feedback. Please comment on this post, especially if you have any ideas about what I should try to cook with these ingredients I have available. I love hearing from you! It really helps!