A team of Ouachita Enactus students began an outreach ministry in the last few weeks to aid in the fight against hunger in the city of Arkadelphia and the surrounding community. Beginning on October 9, members of OBU’s Enactus chapter began what they call “Mission 58:10.”
According to Victoria White, a junior accounting major from Paris, Texas, this project was inspired from a project that Enactus participated in last year called “Rosas Mobile Pack,” sponsored by Feed My Starving Children. As a member of that leadership team, White said that this involved quite a few local school children who had helped them pack meals for these families in need.
“I thought, ‘I bet some of these kids that are helping would like to take some home, because they don’t have enough either,’” White said. “There’s just as much of a mission in Arkadelphia as there is internationally.”
According to White, the team will be conducting a community-wide canned food drive from October 9 through 30 with the partnership of nine local businesses and churches. All resources are provided by Mission 58:10, and “all proceeds of the drive will be donated to two local food pantries, one being the Clark County Ecumenical Food Pantry, and the other being Lighthouse Ministries,” White said.
“From the contacts I’ve talked to, they do once a month feedings, and then they always have programs where they help kids in schools as well,” White said. “The goal was to have a more localized approach to end hunger.”
Further goals include gathering monetary donations throughout the year for another Arkansas Mobile Pack team that is lacking some resources. With Feed My Starving Children, each meal cost 22 cents to pack, meaning that 100,000 meals will cost $22,000.
“With a lot of it, we’ve just been in prayer for what the Good Lord wants us to have,” White said. “We are praying for all of the people we’ll be able to impact. Even if we can just help one family to have a Thanksgiving meal, that’s enough.”
This sponsoring group, Feed My Starving Children, is a national, non-profit organization. If teams provide the volunteer manpower and the finances, the organization brings all the necessary resources to host an event in the area.
Driving some aspects of this mission back to Feed My Starving Children, White said that the team drew its name and inspiration from Isaiah 58:10, which says, “And if you draw out your soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday” (KJV).
In the future, White said that there will be meetings between project leaders, in which they will research further options with the Mission for the spring.
Among the businesses and churches involved, there is Big Cheese Pizza, Chicken Express, Clark County Christian Academy, First United Methodist Church, Goza Middle School, River Ridge Pizza and Ice Cream, Slim and Shorty’s, Southern Bancorp and Third Street Baptist Church. While all of these locations do have the capacity to accept monetary and canned food donations, there are also three locations on Ouachita’s campus in which to make a contribution. There is a box in the lobby of Hickingbotham Hall, on the third floor of Evans’ Student Center and outside the door of the Student Development office.
Contributions and donations are being accepted through October 30, 2016. For more information on Mission 58:10 or how you can be of help, contact Victoria White at whi57899@obu.edu.
– By Julia Williams, Copy Editor
