Then Feed Just One is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation with a mobile food packaging program that packages life saving nutritious meals for starving children and their families in Honduras, Central America. Our name is taken from a quote of Mother Teresa, who once said, “If you cannot feed a hundred people, then feed just one.” Our goal is simple: to help alleviate hunger and malnutrition in the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. The food we package is used as a base from which the hungry and malnourished can help escape the dire consequences of their daily lives. In cooperation with various organizations in Honduras this food is distributed to the most needy in orphanages, children’s homes, and throughout the general population. We accomplish this task each time a school, church, club, or community desires to have a food packing event.  

	An extremely malnourished Francisca, on left, is given Then Feed Just One food to help her gain back her strength.
	On the right, Francisca, after eating Then Feed Just One food for 3 months, has grown back her hair and is looking healthier.

Global and Honduras Hunger: with over a billion people in this world facing hunger and malnutrition each and every day we find the situation in Honduras very serious and dire. In summer 2013 the National Institute of Statistics (INE) of Honduras reported that an estimated 5,889,545 Hondurans live in poverty. That figure represents 69 percent of the country’s population of 8.5 million. A total of 4,213,746 Hondurans, or 50 percent of the population, live in ‘extreme’ poverty. A total of 1,995,200 Hondurans live on less than Lps 20.42 (US $1.00) per day. Honduran economist Carlos Urbizo recently stated, “We talk a lot about poverty in urban areas, but when you understand the poverty rates in the interior of the country, it makes you want to cry. The rates are 70 percent, 80 percent, and perhaps even more. The poverty in rural areas is deplorable.” Congressman Augusto Cruz Ascencio, who is the head of Christian Democratic block in Congress, believes the poverty rates cited by INE are overly conservative. “There are more than 7 million Hondurans in the country who live in poverty in different forms and at different levels,” he said.

A Silent Killer

Malnutrition is the underlying cause of more than 1/3 of all childhood deaths. It is estimated that over 16,000 children under the age of 5 die each day from hunger related diseases. Prices for basic food like rice, maize, wheat, oil, sugar and salt are skyrocketing, forcing millions of the world’s poorest children into severe malnourishment and starvation.

In much of the world, children with full bellies are still lacking the nutrients and vitamins they need to grow to their full potential. A malnourished child is less able to fight off illness, less likely to get the most of schooling, and often becomes physically and mentally stunted. Malnutrition keeps children trapped in the cycle of poverty. Honduras is no different.

In August 2013, the United Nation Children’s Fund said that more than a quarter of children under the age of 5 worldwide are permanently ‘stunted’ from malnutrition, leaving them physically and intellectually weak and representing a scandalous waste of human potential. Anthony Lake, executive director of UNICEF since 2010, said “stunting is the least understood, least recognized and least acted upon crisis.” It is a hidden crisis for these children, a veteran diplomat who was national security adviser to President Bill Clinton in the 1990’s.

Lake said the failure to give children enough Vitamin A, iron and folic acid when developing in the womb, and a balanced diet with clean drinking water in the first 2 years of life, doomed most of them to being anchors on their impoverished societies. “Stunted doesn’t mean simply short,” Lake told The Associated Press in an interview. “ The child’s brain never properly develops. Irrevocably. That’s it. You can’t fix it later. You can fix being underweight. You can’t fix being stunted after age 2. “What this means is, for the remainder of that child’s life, irrevocably the child will learn less in school, will earn less later and is more vulnerable to disease. This is a tragic violation of that child’s life.

UNICEF reported that in Honduras between 2006 and 2010, 29 percent of all children under the age of five suffer from stunting. That will be more than a quarter of all Hondurans that never fully develop their potential.

Thus, Then Feed Just One focuses our efforts on the poorest segments of Honduras.  Then Feed Just One food is very important in the early life of thousands of Honduran children. Please help us help the most needy with your support today.

To schedule a packing event,

please contact Richard Seivert.

Phone: 712-540-3062

Email: rseivert2@yahoo.com

Address: Then Feed Just One

309 8th St. SW

Le Mars, IA  51031

Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you're alive, it isn't.~ Richard Bach