The Field of Hope is a joint effort of several Brethren churches in the Hagerstown area -- Grossnickle, Hagerstown, Welty, Beaver Creek, Myersville, and Harmony, plus a United Church of Christ anda Catholic Church in Middletown.
The planning committee includes representatives from each of these congregations.
The organization is a local affiliate of Food Resources which is a national organization supported by the Church of the Brethren of other denominations.
Field of Hope Growing Project is collecting aluminum cans. You can drop off aluminum cans at a confinement behind the Parish Hall at Grossnickle Church of the Brethren. The cans will be recycled and the money donated to the Field of Hope Growing Project. If anyone is going to Frederick and is willing to help haul cans to the buyer, the committee welcomes your assistance.
The 2012 Overseas Program that we will be supporting is the Kenya – Ngong Program. The Foods Resource Bank website describes this program as follows:
Working in a traditional pastoralist context, this program identifies people as “food secure” when they have access to either 2.5 liters of milk per day which would then be consumed and monetized for other food, 7 mature goats/sheep which could be sold for money to buy food, or Ksh 5,000 of alternative income annually including a monetized value of crop production consumed domestically.
The value of Ksh 5,000, estimated in 2010 would be enough per person to have two meals of ugali (maize porridge), one meal with beans, and some milk and vegetable each day for a year; however prices in 2011 have escalated with maize meal nearly doubling in price and sugar nearly tripling. Self-help groups have been established, trained, and are being monitored in agriculture that takes into account increasing drought, livestock improvement and water access and management. These aspects continue to increase in importance with rising pressures for land sales in the area.
For more information, go to http://www.foodsresourcebank.org.
Future opportunities: Another year brings opportunity for new efforts to continue to "grow" our Growing Project. Some things the Growing Project Committee is
exploring include the following activities:
- Hosting a Food Booth at the Harmony Arts Jamboree to be held on Highland School Road in August * A Pumpkin Patch at the Growing Project Farm with sale of pumpkins at LDS Middlepoint
- A combined Youth Group Car Wash at LDS Middletown *Staffing an information table at Myersville Fire Hall Breakfast. We need the help and interest and willingness of more people to see these dreams come to reality.
