A partnership between Bull Outdoor Products and an educational organization called For a Reason (FAR) is helping children in Haiti. Bull Outdoor Products and FAR have embarked on a Grill for Good campaign that will build outdoor food preparation areas at schools where FAR students attend.
For most students and their classmates, the daily lunch served at these rural schools is the only meal these children will receive that day. The first undertaking is stage one of the outdoor facility at the Zanmi Agrikol University Facility in Corporan, Haiti.
Students learn agricultural techniques, construction and woodworking. The facility will not only be used to prepare and feed the students attending the university, but will eventually become a center for teaching community members about food processing, preparation and preservation.
FAR’s primary mission is to help fulfill the educational aspirations of impoverished students through tuition assistance, educational materials, and housing. Once committed to a student, FAR promises to accompany them throughout their educational journey—elementary to university and professional training.
FAR officials want to see student representatives from every community in the rural Central Plateau region of Haiti attending either the Faculty of Nursing Science of the Episcopal University of Haiti, or the Zanmi Agrikol School of Vocational Training and Agronomy.
Bull Outdoor team member Barbara Nureddine wrote the following article to explain how the Bull/FAR relationship started…
It began when our group visited an elementary school in rural Haiti, an area of subsistence farming and families that earn less than $2 a day. And yet, these are the same families that will sacrifice just about everything to keep their children in school. FAR (For a Reason) is just one of several organizations that help to support these schools and the children that attend them.
On this particular visit to St. Andre’s School in Trianon, the teachers traveling with our group led a lesson about seed germination. Already experts at a young age in the challenges of raising the food necessary to feed their families, these students were excited to decorate their pots and observe the germination process. Shovels, pots, markers and seeds combined to make the day an exciting experience for the students. For me, it was so much more.
Then came lunch time. For most of these students, it was the only meal they would consume that day. As I ventured to the food preparation area, I was shocked by what I saw. There was just a handful of Haitian women were preparing lunch for the 180 students in large kettles over open fires, in the dirt area nearby the classroom buildings. I knew immediately that Bull Outdoor Products could help provide these students and their schools with nutritious meals prepared in a sheltered kitchen facility.
I am so blessed to be a part of the Bull Outdoor Products family and able to help design and build food preparation facilities at schools like Saint Andre’s. By partnering with FAR, For a Reason, we hope to provide students throughout the region with well prepared, nutritional lunches and encourage those students to continue working toward a promising future for themselves and their country.
I invite you to join me in making the promise of a brighter future a reality for these children.
Patio & Hearth Blog 