2700 N. Military Trail, Suite 240
PO Box 273908
Boca Raton, Florida 33427-3908
1-800-914-2420
PROJECT 0105
St. Francis Xavier Catholic
Church Feeding Program
School lunches for poor children
— Rural Guyana —
John answered, “The man with two tunics should share with him who has
none, and the one who has food should do the same.”
Luke 3:11
WWW.CROSSCATHOLIC.ORG
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER CATHOLIC CHURCH FEEDING PROGRAM
PROJECT 0105
Project Synopsis
Description
Provide hot lunches for
hungry children at four rural
primary schools.
Purpose
To improve the nutritional
health of poor school children,
so they’ll have the energy to
thrive in the classroom.
Location
The communities of Arapiako,
Charity, Marlborough and
Lima Sands in rural Guyana,
along the Pomeroon River and
on the coastal regions of the
Essequibo Coast.
Cost
$39,600 provides food, cooks
and transportation to feed
about 390 students. That’s
about $100 per child, per year.
Highlights
• St. Francis Xavier Catholic
Church and the Institute of
the Incarnate Word run a
school feeding program in
rural Guyana.
• Each day, hot meals are
cooked and delivered to
hundreds of students who
cannot afford to bring a
lunch.
• Meals of chicken, beef, fish and other foods are supplemented with vegetables purchased from
some of the students’ own family gardens.
• The food must be transported by boat to very remote locations.
• The meal distributions provide the opportunity for Incarnate Word priests to bring the message
of Christ’s love to school campuses.
• St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church is relying on Cross Catholic Outreach (formerly known as
Cross International Catholic Outreach) to fully fund the feeding program.
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ST. FRANCIS XAVIER CATHOLIC CHURCH FEEDING PROGRAM
PROJECT 0105
Children in rural Guyana must row long distances in dugout canoes to get to school.
The Need
Guyana’s natural beauty proclaims the glory of God. The “land of many waters” is known for its
mountain ranges, lush rainforest and spectacular waterfalls. But the Catholic clergy and lay workers
serving among the South American country’s indigenous communities are also expressing God’s
glory in another way — by confronting the poverty you won’t read about in the tourism brochures.
Isolated from opportunity and lacking education, many indigenous families struggle to provide for
their children. Their homes are one-room shacks, their only means of survival is usually subsistencelevel farming, and they may only have enough food for one small meal a day — usually just a bowl of
rice. To improve their economic situation, some men travel far away to seek employment in the mines,
but the work is dangerous and puts them at high risk of malaria or snake bites. When they get sick,
they can’t work at all, and there is no social safety net for their families during those times.
This poverty also impacts their children, threatening their opportunities for a better life through
an education. Many students must travel miles by dugout canoe just to get to school in the morning.
If they are hungry and malnourished, they struggle to make the journey and arrive with too little
energy to focus on their lessons. As a result, many children never get the education they need to
escape the cycle of poverty.
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ST. FRANCIS XAVIER CATHOLIC CHURCH FEEDING PROGRAM
PROJECT 0105
Ministry Description
Concerned by the number of children staying home from school, St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church
began offering an incentive for attendance: food. Five days a week, nutritious meals are distributed to
as many as 390 hungry students who are too poor to bring a lunch. The guarantee of a free meal has
encouraged many parents to send their children to school, especially in hard times when that meal may
be their sole source of nutrition.
The meals include a variety of
healthy foods such as chicken, beef,
fish, chow mein, plantains and potatoes
— many of which are rarely available
in the children’s limited diets at home.
Vegetables are purchased from some of
the families’ own gardens to help them
earn a small income. All the food is
freshly prepared each day and transported
— in some cases by boat — to four
different communities.
The feeding program is administered
by Institute of the Incarnate Word
priests, who visit the children at their
Your gift to Cross Catholic Outreach will
help provide nutritious meals for hungry
students.
schools and serve as a moral and
spiritual presence. Every meal
begins with prayer, and the children
are encouraged to receive their
food in a spirit of thankfulness
to God.
Strengthened mentally, physically
and spiritually, the children are
equipped to pursue their dreams.
They can stay in school, complete
their primary education, prepare
for secondary school and develop
the self-confidence to become
hardworking, self-sufficient adults.
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ST. FRANCIS XAVIER CATHOLIC CHURCH FEEDING PROGRAM
PROJECT 0105
Help Now!
St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church relies solely on support from Cross Catholic Outreach to cover
the full cost of the school lunch program — and we can’t do it without you! Your gift will help us
continue to support this crucial service that is keeping children in school and saving them from the
painful effects of malnutrition. By giving to Cross Catholic Outreach, you will ensure that no child is
turned away because there isn’t enough to eat. You will keep their bellies full, their minds alert and
their hopes set high.
Won’t you join us today and satisfy the hunger of the poor? Won’t you reach out with love and
compassion to our overseas neighbors in need, remembering Christ’s word in Matthew 25: 40, that
“whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”
Proceeds from this campaign will be used to cover any expenditures for this project incurred during
the current calendar year. In the event that more funds are raised than needed to fully fund the project,
the excess funds, if any, will be used to meet the most urgent needs of the ministry.
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2700 N. Military Trail, Suite 240 • PO Box 273908 • Boca Raton, Florida 33427-3908 • 1-800-914-2420
© Cross Catholic Outreach. Cost effectively written, designed and printed in-house.