Sunday, September 13th marked a milestone for our Salt Project: it was the first day
that Bon Sel Dayiti was sold in Baranque, a rural community located about ten miles outside of Thomassique. Within the first
half-hour of sales, 78 one-pound sachets of co-fortified salt had been sold. What excited us most, however, was not the high
quantity of salt sold, but the enthusiasm shown by the citizens of Baranque. As people poured into the small house adjacent
to the local church to purchase their first bags of iodized, DEC-treated salt, they were visibly excited to take an important
step in ameliorating 
One night during our first few weeks in Thomassique, two young
brothers named Bensi and Benson came to the clinic staff house in tears. The usually upbeat, energetic boys looked weak and
somber. They explained to us that they had not eaten for two days. Their family of fourteen could not sleep because they were
so hungry. Could we help them?
Surely we had enough extra food in the staff house to feed Bensi and Benson that night. But what about their parents and ten siblings? What about the many more hungry nights that inevitably lay in their future? And what about the thousands of other hungry children in Thomassique? We were overwhelmed by the gravity of the situation at hand.
Surely we had enough extra food in the staff house to feed Bensi and Benson that night. But what about their parents and ten siblings? What about the many more hungry nights that inevitably lay in their future? And what about the thousands of other hungry children in Thomassique? We were overwhelmed by the gravity of the situation at hand.
That night, we made sandwiches for Bensi
and Benson. We explained that this was a one-time occurrence – we are a clinic and not a food program; we simply to
do not have the capacity to feed children every day. It was a Band-Aid solution – immediate but unsustainable –
to the widespread, persisting problem of food insecurity in Haiti. That night was the first of several instances in which we have been asked to hand out food. Such situations present us with
a recurring dilemma: Our instinct is to feed hungry children, but we must realize that haphazardly handing out food creates
unsustainable dependencies that could ultimately threaten the efficacy of our programs in Thomassique.
A more effective way for us to begin to establish food security in Thomassique is to collaborate with organizations that have the resources and expertise to implement sustainable, broad-reaching programs. That is just what Rita and Nick, the ’08-’09 Global Health Fellows, did last fall when they contacted Feed My Starving Children (FMSC), a Minnesota-based nonprofit organization dedicated to providing nutritious food through feeding programs worldwide. Rita and Nick applied to receive enough lunches for two local schools – EMSH and Tèt Ansanm, where lunches were served four times a week for the remainder of the school year. Given the success of the program last year, they sought to expand to more schools in Thomassique. After fundraising to purchase two large food storage containers and reaching out to the directors of several other schools, two new schools were added to the program: Lekòl Fermy and Lekòl Me, the Catholic school.
A more effective way for us to begin to establish food security in Thomassique is to collaborate with organizations that have the resources and expertise to implement sustainable, broad-reaching programs. That is just what Rita and Nick, the ’08-’09 Global Health Fellows, did last fall when they contacted Feed My Starving Children (FMSC), a Minnesota-based nonprofit organization dedicated to providing nutritious food through feeding programs worldwide. Rita and Nick applied to receive enough lunches for two local schools – EMSH and Tèt Ansanm, where lunches were served four times a week for the remainder of the school year. Given the success of the program last year, they sought to expand to more schools in Thomassique. After fundraising to purchase two large food storage containers and reaching out to the directors of several other schools, two new schools were added to the program: Lekòl Fermy and Lekòl Me, the Catholic school.
The nutritious meals, which are packaged in sachets containing enough food for six meals, consist of rice, soy nuggets, vitamins,
minerals, and dehydrated vegetables. The meals are easily prepared by boiling water and cooking the packaged food for 20 minutes.
Each meal costs just US$0.17 to produce, and the food is completely paid for by FMSC. Rita’s fundraising covered the
costs of shipment and storage. This year, we’ll be working to think of new ways to fundraise to cover these expenses
in the future (if you are interested in donating to this program, please email us at mmfellowship2010@gmail.com). 
This past Tuesday marked the beginning of the school
year, and was indeed a very exciting day for us. We visited Tèt Ansanm (a free school co-founded by a clinic employee,
Down Webelson) as the children received hot meals. Our feelings were indescribable – it was incredible to witness tangible
improvements to the lives of so many children. Through our School Lunch Program, 1690 children will receive 270,864 meals
this year.
This year, Bensi and Benson
will attend EMSH, one of the schools in our lunch program. We are happy to know that they will regularly receive nutritious
meals. Remembering that difficult night three months ago, we realize that the School Lunch Program is only a first step in
addressing a problem that is chronic and expansive. However, we truly believe that our partnership with FMSC exemplifies the
kind of programmatic collaboration necessary to effect real and lasting change.
