Stephanie’s Mission builds schools and houses in Jamaica

In their continuing effort to honor their daughter's legacy, Lenny and Lin Crispinelli will travel to Jamaica for a second time to follow in Stephanie's footsteps with Food For The Poor. In less than two days, the team of 33 friends and family members will build a school to serve children, like the ones that first inspired Stephanie's enthusiasm to "Do work" on a mission trip with the charity.
One of the people making the trip, Nikki Fantauzzi, was with Stephanie in Haiti with a group from Lynn University on a Food For The Poor mission trip when the 7.0 magnitude earthquake instantly claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

Fantauzzi, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, drove four boxes of educational supplies from the Crispinelli's home in New York to Food For The Poor's headquarters in Coconut Creek, Fla. On Monday, May 23, before they left for Jamaica, the group stuffed backpacks for the children who attend Gimme-Me-Bit's school in Clarendon, Jamaica.

“Even though Stephanie is no longer physically here, through the work of her friends and family her mission and dream of making a difference continues,” said Fantauzzi.

Construction of this school named ‘Steph’s Place II’ will begin on Fantauzzi’s birthday. Through Fantauzzi’s Champions For The Poor web page, you can donate to help complete Steph’s Place II.

“Stephanie’s parents are doing a tremendous amount of good for Jamica’s youth by constructing a school each year in her honor,” said Robin Mahfood, Food For The Poor’s President/CEO. “By providing disadvantaged children with the opportunity to learn, Stephanie’s parents guarantee her memory, and her passion for serving others will continue to live in many hearts.”

While in Jamaica, Stephanie’s family and friends will also visit the school they built last year, ‘Steph’s Place’ in Race Course, Clarendon. The other sites to be visited are the same places Stephanie experienced while in Jamaica on her first mission trip with Food For The Poor. In her footsteps, group members will feed lunch to handicapped children, create arts and crafts with AIDS-affected children, shoot soccer goals with orphaned boys, and care for at-risk girls.

This year, in addition to funding Steph’s Place II, three homes for destitute families have been built with resources collected through the Stephanie Crispinelli Humanitarian Fund. At W R Berkley Corporation’s annual holiday party in Greenwich, Conn., Lin Crispinelli and friends successfully auctioned off a Wizard of Oz-themed gingerbread house, paying for the first installation of Steph’s Place II. Yorktown Jewelers and its customers have helped to host and support fundraisers that promote Stephanie’s mission.

Food For The Poor, the third-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 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.

Contact:
Jennifer Leigh Oates
Food For The Poor
Public Relations
954-427-2222 x 6054
jennifero@foodforthepoor.com