In January 2005, while on Gehlen Catholic’s medical team mission to Honduras, Dr. Gary Carlton (a surgeon from Sioux City) was confronted by an elderly woman who was disappointed following her visit with him. When he asked why she was disappointed she replied, “because I am hungry and you didn’t bring any food.”
In the subsequent months Gehlen Catholic Kids Against Hunger, now Then Feed Just One, was born – to answer the very issue the elderly lady presented that day to Dr. Carlton. Up until this event Gehlen Catholic Mission Honduras was primarily concerned with health care and water projects in the 2nd poorest country in the western hemisphere. Following Dr. Carlton’s event with the elderly woman, we at Gehlen awoke to the reality of life for so many billions who go hungry each and every day.
A committee of faculty and staff began planning in the fall of 2005 for our first packing event planned for the spring of 2006. That first year Gehlen students, faculty, staff, and volunteers packed 181,200 meals. The food from our first packing event was sent toTanzania, East Africa, and Honduras.
The whole concept of Then Feed Just One is premised on one notion – that Gehlen Catholic Schools, its students, faculty, staff, and parents, carry out the mission presented to us in our very faith as stated by Mother Teresa, "If you cannot feed a hundred people, then feed just one."
Each year at Gehlen we encourage our students, transitional kindergarten through seniors, to save a total of $30.00 throughout the school year – hopefully, $30.00 of their own money. We encourage them to do this a little at a time. That money, once collected, pays for everything involved in packing and shipping meals to the hungry, and it gives each of our students the chance to work a time shift in actually packing food. In May 2008 our total event, from beginning to the food actually being distributed in Honduras, came to 10.7 cents per meal.
For more information, visit www.thenfeedjustone.org.
