“I’m starving!”  How many times have you said those words without stopping to think what they really mean?  And what do you do next? Probably open a cupboard, a fridge, or maybe a takeaway menu. Imagine if you didn’t have that luxury. Imagine if being genuinely hungry was part of your everyday life and you didn’t have the power to do anything about it. For many homeless young people and adults in Zimbabwe - and across the continent - malnutrition is a reality. 

The Midlands Children’s Hope Centre in Gweru, Zimbabwe runs a Drop-in Centre, where growing numbers of street children, the city’s adult homeless and people at risk, either elderly or living with a disability, can receive a daily hot meal. For many of them, this service provides the only guarantee that they will eat regularly.

Along with offering vital nourishment, the Drop-in Centre also has available bathing facilities, free medical healthcare, family tracing and reunification, counselling, remedial education and recreation facilities. Currently, the Centre is unable to afford to purchase permanent premises, so has to pay building rental costs until sufficient funds can be raised. Finding this monthly payment, plus running costs and the price of food is a relentless challenge. ALERT, along with generous supporters and volunteers, contributes to these costs, but a lack of funds remains a constant issue.

ALERT urgently needs your help

Since our appeal this time last year, donations to the Miss a Meal in May campaign, along with contributions from ALERT and Antelope Park volunteers and supporters, have helped to achieve the following:

• The purchase of cooking utensils, crockery and cutlery

• The regular purchase of groceries to provide a hot lunch for between 25 and 35 street children, Monday to Friday

• Assistance with the monthly running costs of rent, electricity, water, cleaning materials and administration expenses

Although the Drop-in Centre currently relies entirely on donations, the MCHC has launched two income-generating projects at the new orphanage site: the chicken project, in which chicks are raised and sold to the local community and the garden project to grow and sell vegetables. In time, it is anticipated that these initiatives will yield sufficient profit to allow the Centre to become more self-sufficient in the longer-term.

Please Miss a Meal in May and donate the money you would have spent to the Drop-in Centre instead. Eating out is enjoyable and Friday nights are made for takeaways, but what you spend on one meal could provide food for a street child for a week. Skip breakfast, lunch or dinner, or even miss a meal once a week in May to make your contribution even more significant.

We need you to spread the word, so that more people know what they can achieve by missing a meal. Not only will encouraging your family, friends and colleagues to join you help raise vital funds to allow the Drop-in Centre to continue to feed street children and destitute adults, it will also increase awareness of the plight of those living in poverty in Africa.

Thank you for your support from ALERT and everyone at the Drop-in Centre.  Together, we can help to make a difference to this community in need.

ALERT is a registered charity in the UK, USA, Zambia and Zimbabwe Visit www.lionalert.org for further information.