“This is a way we can show the people of Haiti that we care,” said Aaron McCollough, director of the Troup Baptist Association. “Each bucket of food will feed a family of four for a week.”
The project is open to any individual or church - not just Baptist churches, McCollough said.
The 5-gallon buckets are to be filled with rice, cooking oil, dried beans, flour, sugar, spaghetti noodles and peanut butter. There is a specific set of instructions - including sizes for each item - for filling each bucket available at www.TroupBaptist.org. Only buckets packed with these standard items will be accepted.
Home Depot in LaGrange has heavily discounted 5-gallon buckets with lids specifically for this project, McCollough said.
Total cost of the bucket, the items and a $10 per bucket shipping fee is about $40. The filled buckets will be taken to Macon and eventually shipped to Haiti for distribution.
“We may never get the chance to meet these folks, but we can send this and know we’ve worked together here to make a difference there,” McCollough said.
Southern Baptists have been working in disaster relief since 1967. Currently, there are more than 90,000 trained volunteers that respond to disasters worldwide. Its disaster relief program partners with the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army.
“We have a national written agreement between Southern Baptist Disaster Relief and the national American Red Cross,” said Stuart Lang, director of disaster relief at the Georgia Baptist Convention, headquartered in Duluth.
The Buckets of Hope for Haiti program is a national program that is coordinated by Southern Baptists in Florida, Lang said. The packed buckets will be shipped to Florida, then to Haiti and distributed among the 1,000 Southern Baptist churches for distribution.
“These buckets are not going to the government, they are going to the churches where they will be distributed among the communities,” Lang said. “From the beginning of this disaster, the Haitian pastors have had a tremendous passion to minister to the people.”
— Buckets of Hope for Haiti
Each 5-gallon bucket is to be filled with specific food items that will feed a family of four for a week. For details, including photos on how to pack the buckets, as well as how to purchase discounted buckets at Home Depot, see www.troupbaptist.org or call (706) 884-1974. The filled buckets must be turned in by March 8 to Sunnyside Baptist Church in LaGrange, (706) 882-1776 or to First Baptist Church in West Point, (706) 645-2969.
Sherri Brown can be reached at sbrown@lagrangenews.com or at (706) 884-7311, Ext. 240.
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