The recent outbreak of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 has caused us once again to adjust our food distribution initiative in Ghana, West Africa. Crackdowns on travel, checkpoints, shortages of foodstuffs in the markets, even mass protests threaten to disrupt the food support we provide for hundreds of needy rural children and their families.
Our volunteers on the ground are concerned that Omicron and the anticipated spike of COVID-19 during the holidays and flu season will cause an outbreak of food related stresses, unbearable appeals for help and possible deaths from hunger. As a ministry, we believe our free food distribution program is a critical service that greatly impacts families and children in need. During the COVID-19 crisis, our gallant volunteers have braved extraordinary conditions and have risked their own lives to bring over 10,000 meals to more than 6,000 people who faced extreme hunger in rural areas where the mainstream Ghana churches refuse to venture.
The recent uptick in Omicron and COVID-19 has prompted an adjustment to our distribution plan to include, but not limited to, house to house calls, person to person encounters, centralized distribution at select locations and mobile distribution strategies where vehicles will be used by volunteers to trace beneficiaries and donate foodstuffs directly to them, wherever they might be. The past ten days, we have activated this strategy and it is working—almost like an underground railroad for food.
The good news about all this is that our volunteers are willing to go out there to distribute food, irrespective of the Omicron variant and other COVID-19 threats. Thanks be to God! Also, we take solace in the assurance from God, in Exodus 16:12, which states: “I’ve heard the complaints of the children of Israel, Speak to them saying, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread.” As a ministry we say Amen to that, praying help will reach the needy in the partnership of God’s grace, donor support and the positive action of volunteers.
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