Kids For Housing

Food For The Poor Rolls Out Blueprints for Teachers

	Students at Greater Works Christian School in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, built a home for a family in Nicaragua.
Related Items: Start a Kids For Housing campaign See Photos of Families Helped

COCONUT CREEK, Fla. (Sept. 4, 2014) – With school back in session, Food For The Poor has released new teacher resources to help students create positive change in the world. The charity’s Kids For Housing program incorporates the education students receive in the classroom with the opportunity to provide safe, secure housing for destitute families in developing countries.

“Teachers do an incredible job with the resources they have available,” said Angel Aloma, Food For The Poor’s Executive Director, who taught for 21 years at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “Participating in Kids For Housing instills deep thinking, and allows students the chance to build their confidence as they struggle to create their own unique fundraising solutions.”

“Dilapidated shacks made of scraps of wood, plastic and cardboard are very dangerous and offer families little or no protection from natural disasters, insects and rodents,” Aloma said. “The health of the children also suffers when they live in dirt-floor houses with crumbling walls, no sanitation and roofs that leak.”

Students at Greater Works Christian School in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, already know which family they will build a home for this year through Kids For Housing.

“They loved the project once they understood that not everyone lives like them,” said Candy Spahr, the Missions and Evangelism teacher at Greater Works Christian School. “Last year, it took students only three months to raise the money needed to move a family out of squalor and into a new, permanent Food For The Poor home in Nicaragua.”

“They really get it,” Spahr said. “It is very touching. I am humbled that God would use me to teach someone to care about someone else in a world where it is all about me, me, me.”

Kids For Housing motivated even some of the youngest students to raise money to build the house. A kindergartener walked the neighborhood with her mother to sell coloring book artwork to neighbors, while others chose to clean their grandparents’ houses. The third-grade class sold colorful loom bracelets at lunch, while others chose to share their passion for the cause on Facebook.

Through Kids For Housing students are encouraged to purchase paper bricks that represent the materials used to build a home for a poor family. When the last brick is in place, the money needed to build the home will have been raised. Food For The Poor can then start construction on the home for the family in Latin America or the Caribbean. A picture of the family standing in front of their new home will be mailed to the school once the home is built.

To learn how you can start your school on a journey to transform a desperate family’s life, one brick at a time, please call 877-654-2960, ext. 6608, or visit www.FoodForThePoor.org/kidsforhousing to access the teacher resources. Miniature model Food For The Poor houses are available by request to help students visualize a completed Food For The Poor home.

Food For The Poor, named by The Chronicle of Philanthropy as the largest international relief and development organization in the nation, does much more than feed millions of the hungry poor in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. This interdenominational Christian ministry provides emergency relief assistance, clean water, medicines, educational materials, homes, support for orphans and the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance, with more than 95 percent of all donations going directly to programs that help the poor. For more information, please visit www.FoodForThePoor.org.