Taiwan Official Visits Food For The Poor

The new Director General of the Taipei Economic Cultural Office in Miami visited the Food For The Poor headquarters on Nov. 24 to offer support of the work that the organization is doing for the poor, especially in Haiti.

Director General Ray Mou and Food For The Poor President/CEO Robin Mahfood met to talk about the agency’s work, and how Taiwan can offer further assistance. The two leaders followed the tradition of exchanging symbolic gifts between the organizations.

“As Haiti has endured storms, a food shortage, an earthquake, and now a cholera outbreak, the Taiwanese have helped us feed and take care of the people of Haiti,” Mahfood said. “We are grateful for their continued partnership with us -- not only to meet the immediate food needs, but in helping us come up with solutions for long-term hunger problems.”

From 2005 to 2008, Taiwan sent 40 containers of rice every month to Haiti. This monthly donation of 1,000 tons of rice helped Haiti through a critical time of storms and food shortages. And then again, immediately after the earthquake, Taiwan partnered once again with Food For The Poor to ship 500 tons of rice to Haiti. Taiwan’s President Ma traveled to the Dominican Republic to personally oversee the handing over of 10 tons of relief supplies, and Taiwan offered food aid to meet emergency needs, working through Food For The Poor and other agencies.

“I am deeply impressed by the work that Food For The Poor has done for the people in need, especially for the Haitian people who are now facing many challenges,” Director General Mou said. “On behalf of the government and people in Taiwan, I expect to work closely with Food For The Poor in the area of humanitarian aid. It is a high priority on my list to fulfill my mission in Miami.”

The Taiwan International Cooperation and Development Fund (Taiwan ICDF) has extensive experience in the development of fish farms, especially in growing tilapia, and has partnered with Food For The Poor to establish basa farms in the poverty-stricken, food-deficient countries served by the nonprofit.

Taiwan’s first lady Chow Mei-ching and daughter, Lesley Ma, traveled to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in August to assess the situation and meet with Mahfood. The mother-daughter humanitarian team eagerly rolled up their sleeves in Food For The Poor’s feeding center as they helped serve rice donated from the people of Taiwan to Haiti’s destitute.

Food For The Poor, the third-largest international relief and development organization in the United States, does much more than feed millions of hungry poor in 17 countries in the Caribbean and Latin America. This interdenominational Christian agency 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 96 percent of all donations going directly to programs that help the poor. For more information, please visit www.foodforthepoor.org.