Hello!
We have exciting news to share... I, along with my son-in-law Otoniel, and a mission team from Michigan (9 people in total) will be traveling to the village of Fao in the Dominican Republic, along with Mika's Lunch on February 8-15, 2025. Mika’s Lunch exists to fight hunger in 5 schools throughout the DR. They serve Haitian and Dominican children but also serve families and the communities.
ABOUT MIKA’s LUNCH
Outside of Santo Domingo, the capitol of the Dominican Republic, lies Batey Fao. The village is a shanty-town, made up of tin shacks and inhabited by Haitians from the other side of the island. It lies under a set of high power lines. The Haitians are mostly illegals, having come over from Haiti to work in the sugar cane plantations that used to be owned by the Dominican government. The plantations were later privatized, and the new owners fired the Haitians and replaced them with Dominicans. The Haitian people, often living as squatters, are now day laborers, hustling to get work wherever they can find it. In a good day, they might make the equivalent of two American dollars. The conditions in Haiti are so much more horrific, however, that the Haitians remain in the Dominican as they seek to make new lives for their families.
In the village, there is a Christian school named the Jerico School. This school has grades one through eight, and its students are mostly Haitian children. Many families struggle to make the tuition payments, even at ten dollars a month. The parents see the Jerico School as a hoped-for “ticket out” of the village for their children. In the school, the children learn Christian values, learn to read and write, learn arithmetic, geography, and other subjects. If they can make it through the eighth grade, and better yet high school, they have a real chance to earn Dominican citizenship, thus opening the doors to employment, health care, and a new life.
Students at Jerico School wear uniforms, and often siblings go to school half a day, then return home to their shack and give up their uniform to their sibling so he or she can attend the other half of the day. There is typically little or no food in the home for a mid-day meal.
Mika’s Lunch is named after a little girl named Mika, now an adult, we have gotten to love Mika, her family and the whole village. Mika is from a family that has little but even so has a great faith that the Lord will provide.
The aim of Mika’s Lunch is to give a noon meal to the students at not just Jerico School but many other schools as well, so the children can better focus and learn. The meal is simple – a mixture of rice, protein and vegetables that is created to be nutritious and filling. It provides enough to settle the brain down and keep the body going until the evening meal, if there is one. The principal of the school shared these words, “The children are concentrating more, they are never late for school, they are returning with their homework, and they don’t cry anymore because they’re wondering if they will have money to eat. Something wonderful is going on in our school right now.”
There is a story similar to Mika’s at every school and in every village that we serve.
We will be building a kitchen in the Fao school. This will allow Mika’s Lunch cooks to cook the food fresh instead of having it cooked off-site and delivered. The current kitchen doesn’t meet requirements to safely cook the food.
A FEW KEY STATS:
- Each lunch costs. $ .70 cents
- The cost to sponsor one child for a full year (school year + summer) is $166
- This breaks down to only $14/month per child!
- Mika’s Lunch is currently feeding (as of 2023) approximately 1,500 school aged children per day, 5 days a week, plus younger children, vulnerable moms, the elderly, and teachers and staff. With the help of our generous partners and donors, we are thrilled to be serving over 300,000 meals per year!
The trip cost per person is approximately $1500 and will cover all travel, meals, and accommodations, and we could certainly use your support either by prayer or donation.
One more piece of news that we wanted to share about this trip is that when Otoniel came to the United States in late March to marry our daughter he was not permitted to go back to Fao until he obtained his green card. Knowing the timeframe could be months or years, he made the trip and came to the US, leaving his entire family and all of his friends behind. I am sure you can imagine how very difficult this has been for Otoniel, but we are overjoyed to share that Otoniel just received his green card and is now permitted to go see his family and join this mission team and give back to the community in which he was raised. I am extremely excited to finally get to meet his entire family while we are there and to finally be able to give his mom a hug and thank her for raising such an incredible young man that I get to call son!
Your prayers are truly appreciated and if you would like to help us finance our trip, we would be so blessed. Thank you for your prayers and consideration. God Bless.
Love, Bryan and Otoniel