Day 27: The missing drop

I'm dedicating day 27 to this girl I met in the Secunderabad Landfill "Scavengers' Colony" as I call it. It's one of the several slum colonies on the edge of this massive city landfill serving the metro Hyderabad, India area. Most people have never heard of this city. However, it's among the world's 40 most populous cities at an estimated 8.2 million residents.

The local language here is Telugu, which is the mother tongue to over 80 million people, ranking it as the 15th most widely spoken language in the world—more than Korean, French or Italian. But the average person I meet has never heard of Telugu. Such is the contradiction of India, with its 1.1 billion citizens and 13 official languages.

Yet among all of this overwhelming statistical data, stands this one girl. A girl we can help. She's in a colony right beside the slum settlement where our "Children's Hope Center" is located. Here I met her family as they invited me into their make-shift home assembled from tattered tarps and vinyl ad banners they found in the trash.

If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one. We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. —Mother Teresa

Along with our native team members, I've interviewed the parents of this colony, and they are very interested in enrolling their children, including this girl, at our Children's Hope Center. And we'd love to help. We just can't do it all by ourselves. That's where we can all come together to make a difference, for her and her friends here.

Our India farmland's profits are helping to supplement the budget of this outreach, but it's not enough to meet the growing needs. This is where your donation, however small, can make a real difference in the life of a child of the slums. Education coupled with proper nutrition can completely change the course of a child's life. The potential alternative routes for these children are quite desperate—many will end up as trafficking victims, being sold for labor or prostitution. Here's a summary I wrote describing the depth of the challenges these children face.

However, here's the other side of the equation. There are children we've rescued from child labor, now flourishing at our Children's Hope Center just a short walk from where I took the photograph above.

We're just $480 away from funding our 17th scholarship just through readers of this blog! That's huge! Follow this link to give any amount you can afford to chip in, it all makes a difference! Your gift will ensure that another child has a chance to break out of the cycle of extreme poverty, to get out of the dangerous work of sifting through the trash, onto the solid tracks of education and proper nutrition!

On to what I was able to cook up using a total of just $1 worth of food for these 3 meals...

Breakfast. Nothing to write home about, but it was a solid breakfast. 1/3 cup oatmeal with raisins and dash of cinnamon. Breakfast taco with plain 1-egg omelet, rice and beans. ▼

Lunch. Quite an inspirational breakthrough here. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I went a little conservative on rations for the first 25 days. That's left me with a nice surplus to finish out the challenge! Today I had an entire potato and an extra ration of pasta noodles. I was googling baked potato recipes and came across this one. It's a Swedish recipe called Baked Hasselback Potato, and let me tell you, it is something pretty awesome, especially when you're hungry. Also had an extra egg today, so after beating, I tried dropping it into the boiling pasta at one minute remaining and it gave it a really great consistency. Mixed in about three tablespoons of pasta sauce and I had quite a feast on my hands here. ▼

Dinner. Can't go wrong with tostadas, that's my motto. The crispy goodness of corn tortillas baked in the oven, topped with re-fried rice and beans mix and steamed cabbage and carrots, seasoned with your favorite seasonings, and bam, wow, it's fresh, not too heavy and really delicious! A very natural, healthful, wholesome dish! ▼

Take Action!

1) Please consider giving toward scholarships for children of the slums. Our goal is to cover a scholarship for 20 kids to get an education this next year. Every little bit helps!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to Peace Gospel. If you're in the UK, use this link.

3) If you're compelled by my effort here, please share it with friends. One of the main goals is awareness. So if you can help with that, huge.

4) Leave me feedback. Please comment on this post, especially if you have any ideas about what I should try to cook with these ingredients I have available. I love hearing from you! It really helps!

Day 26: Surplus!

Today I'm taking a break from "heavy" blogging due to yesterday's intense post. Great news is that I went way conservative on my first 25 days' rations, and now I find myself with a bit of a surplus for the remainder of the challenge. This comes at a great time in the "race" as this is when it starts getting really monotonous.

In other good news, we received a very generous $25 donation and this brings us up to our 16th scholarship now funded! Wow! This makes it all worth it and I'm so grateful for all of your support in whatever way you've offered it. Whether it be through your encouragement, sharing my posts, spreading the word about this blog, using the amazon link or actually giving toward the goal, I'm thankful for your support!

So here's what I was able to come up with using just $1 worth of ingredients for today's 3 meals...

Breakfast. Nothing super-fancy here, just a breakfast taco with my typical re-fried rice-n-beans mix plus a fried egg on a corn tortilla. When you're hungry, wow, this really hits the spot, and plenty of protein to get you pretty close to lunch. ▼

Lunch. I know, it's redundant, right? But when you don't have a lot of time and you're really hungry, you make what you like and what you know works. I just love this Korean bibimbap dish. It's so easy and it's so tasty. Half a brick of Ramen noodles, brown rice, carrots, cabbage all stir fried, with a fried egg on top. The runny yolk creates a sort of sauce and it's really quite satisfying. All for about 30 cents! ▼

Dinner. Depending on what your definition is, these are either chimichangas or taquitos. Whatever you want to call them, these hit the spot after a long wait since lunch. My usual recipe on this works quite well, and easy to make. Just google chimichanga recipe and you'll find plenty of options on this. My version is a simple re-fried bean-n-rice mix with raw carrots for the filling inside the corn tortillas, topped with pasta sauce after baking for 8 minutes at 500F/260C. ▼

Take Action!

1) Please consider giving toward scholarships for children of the slums. Our goal is to cover a scholarship for 20 kids to get an education this next year. Every little bit helps!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to Peace Gospel. If you're in the UK, use this link.

3) If you're compelled by my effort here, please share it with friends. One of the main goals is awareness. So if you can help with that, huge.

4) Leave me feedback. Please comment on this post, especially if you have any ideas about what I should try to cook with these ingredients I have available. I love hearing from you! It really helps!

Day 10: Hope for the victims

I'm dedicating day 10 of my challenge to the kids of this slum colony in Manila, Philippines. It's the Payatas Landfill Colony. Most who live here work at the edge of the landfill sifting through the trash seeking redeemable materials. It's not really so much a landfill as it is a huge smoking mountain of trash. The fact that its official name is the "Payatas Sanitary Landfill" is quite ironic. As you can see from the photos below, it's anything but sanitary.

Kids of all ages can be found working here, rummaging through the trash, collecting whatever recyclable or redeemable materials they can find, sorting it into different bags. During my visits here, I've been shocked to see how many of the kids have open sores and skin rashes. The air and water quality conditions are unfathomably deplorable. Here's a shot I took during my visit just 3 months ago.

Here's another shot I captured in the same colony, revealing a common scene of kids playing in an open sewage drain. Already victims of child labor, they're also at extreme risk of human trafficking—an estimated 60k to 100k children in the Philippines (mostly in Manila, population 20 million) are involved in prostitution rings run by organized crime.

These scenes are heartbreaking, but the good news is, there's hope, and you can do something about it. Through the development of a sustainable model that empowers a native-led farmland in the Philippines, funds are being multiplied to help these kids break out of the cycle of extreme poverty. Through education and nutrition, kids are getting out of the trash heap and into school. Here's a scene I shot at our "Children's Hope Center" in the same colony! Here kids are getting access to educational supplies that help them enroll in school, computer classes and nutritious meals.

My goal with this 30 day challenge is not just to bring awareness of extreme poverty and child labor, but to help you see that together, we can do something about it. Thus I'm encouraging everyone visiting this blog to chip in whatever they can afford to help me fund 20 scholarships for children who are living in these conditions—to give them hope, that someone cares, and that they can actually go to school, eat fresh, nutritious meals and make plans for a future outside the colony. Please give whatever you can afford, just visit this page to learn more and donate today!

I'm super happy with our total of $1,605 raised to date! This means 3 children's lives will be forever impacted through the opportunity their scholarships will afford them! Just $395 more until we reach one more scholarship!

Today I'm definitely feeling the hunger and cravings starting to kick in. But overall, I cannot complain, knowing how much less of a challenge I'm facing than they face every day. Here's what I came up with for day 10...

Breakfast. Just a simple breakfast taco on a corn tortilla, with pinto beans, brown rice and I took the time to add boiled potatoes for variety this morning. ▼

Lunch. Another vegetable soup creation, this time with pasta noodles, cabbage, brown rice, pinto beans, seasonings and some extra carrots saved from yesterday's unused ration. ▼

Dinner. Went with the baked goodness of re-fried bean, rice and carrot taquitos again. Topped with pasta sauce and seasonings, this hit the spot, all things considered. ▼

I really appreciate your support! Although no donations came through today, I know it will pick back up! I just appreciate your use of the Amazon link below, and all you're doing to spread the word, not to mention just reading this far! Thank you!

Take Action!

1) Please consider giving toward scholarships for children of the slums. Our goal is to cover a scholarship for 20 kids to get an education this next year. Every little bit helps!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to Peace Gospel. If you're in the UK, use this link.

3) If you're compelled by my effort here, please share it with friends. One of the main goals is awareness. So if you can help with that, huge.

4) Leave me feedback. Please comment on this post, especially if you have any ideas about what I should try to cook with these ingredients I have available. I love hearing from you! It really helps!>

Day 7: It all adds up

Sorry if I come across as a little worked up today, but I've got a story to tell and not sure how to write it without sounding dramatic. I hope you'll understand my passion.

It was in the slums of Kampala, Uganda, I met this little girl. Here most live on just about 2500 Ugandan Shillings a day, or about $1/day. Fortunately I was able to make her smile after this shot, but honestly, in this colony, where children play barefoot in raw sewage, there's not much to smile about.

But we're starting a new program in her colony where she'll have a chance to live the words on her shirt. However, we can't make it happen without your help. Let's come together, to overcome the indifference we've all succumbed to at one time or another, to throw off the mask of deception that blinds us from the reality THAT WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. It worked for these girls at one of our schools in rural Uganda, because several of you chose to overcome that feeling--instead choosing to rise up and do SOMETHING, no matter how small. Here's the result...

Take for example, a donation we received today, for five US dollars. That is huge, you know why? Not because it's a ton of money, not because it's going to rock our thermometer off the charts, but because someone chose to overcome indifference--chose to say, "It may not seem like much to me, but I'm going to be a part of the solution, I'm going to do something."

That is the only way we'll ever change the story of extreme poverty. It's the only way we'll ever stop the horrible crimes of child prostitution, child labor, abuse and malnutrition--by doing something, doing anything! The more involvement, the more it multiplies. It's about creating a movement of action-taking and ignoring the voice that's telling you your part won't make a difference. And remember that our actions create a ripple effect that inspires others to do their part!

Leave a comment if you have any questions about the meals from today; no time for specifics on the recipes. Thanks for your support! Here's what I managed to cook up with $1 worth of food today...

Breakfast. Steamed cabbage, egg, rice and bean breakfast taco. ▼

Lunch. Re-fried bean, rice & carrot taquitos, topped with steamed cabbage and an improvised bean & rice tomato "soup" topping. ▼

Dinner.  Ramen & pasta noodle tortilla soup, with beans, rice and carrots.▼

In other great news, we received a pledge for $400 toward our goal, which means we've cleared our first step of the goal--our first scholarship is funded! We're now at a total of $505 raised! Just $495 to go until we get another scholarship in place! Please chip in, any amount makes a difference!

Just follow this link to donate toward the goal today!

Take Action!

1) Please consider giving toward scholarships for children of the slums. Our goal is to cover a scholarship for 20 kids to get an education this next year. Every little bit helps!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to Peace Gospel. If you're in the UK, use this link.

3) If you're compelled by my effort here, please share it with friends. One of the main goals is awareness. So if you can help with that, huge.

4) Leave me feedback. Please comment on this post, especially if you have any ideas about what I should try to cook with these ingredients I have available. I love hearing from you! It really helps!

Day 3: Work with what you've got

To sum up the aim of our "Children's Hope Centers" here's a "before" picture I shot on my last visit--children in the slums of Hyderabad, India--victims of child labor. Her faded shirt says, "LOVE IS THE MESSAGE." That pretty much sums it up!

And, essentially, here's the "after" picture--girls who came out of child labor, now happy to be enrolled at our Children's Hope Center in Hyderabad, India. All because someone cared enough to help pitch in toward their scholarships!

My goal for this 30 day challenge is to raise enough funds to rescue 20 more kids from child labor, with scholarships that will put them through a year of school, tutoring and nutrition. We're at $25 of my $10,000 goal.

It's just $500 per scholarship--that takes care of their shoes, hygiene items, uniforms, tutoring, computer classes, school supplies and nutritious meals served at the centers for an entire year! Come on, we can do better than this! Let's get to that first scholarship today! $475 to go! If you can spare anything, even $5, please donate here.

On to what I was able to cook up with just a dollar's worth of food today... like a lot of things in life, it's all about working with what you've got and making the best of it...

Breakfast. As usual, on the run, so I had to settle for a quick cup of oatmeal. I "bought" a pinch of sugar and cinnamon from my existing stock, using my seasonings "allowance" along with a few raisins from my raisin ration, and boom, I had a decent breakfast that probably cost about 20 cents. It held me over to lunch pretty well. ▼

Lunch. A ramen noodle stew of sorts. Delicious and very hearty! A lot of ingredients here--ramen noodles, 2/3 cup brown rice, 1/3 cup pinto beans, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, and one egg prepared egg-drop style. 1/3 of a spicy ramen seasoning packet along with a few dashes of season-all. It really hit the spot! ▼

Dinner. Rice, bean and carrot taquitos! These are amazingly simple and delicious. Used about 2/3 cup of cooked pinto beans to make re-fried beans, 1/3 cup of brown rice, and a few slices of carrot. Microwave 3 corn tortillas in damp paper towels to make them pliant. Baste the tortillas with canola oil. Then fill the tortillas with the ingredients, wrap and flip, placing onto cookie sheet. Bake in the oven at 500F/260C for 8 minutes. Presto! Add pasta sauce sparingly and season with season-all. Absolutely delicious meal, for about 30-40 cents total. ▼

Dessert. Remember my frozen banana slices? Took a couple of those out, added raisins on top and sprinkled with a few dashes of cinnamon from my seasonings allowance, and, dang, these were little bursts of paradise in my mouth! Like ice cream or Japanese mochi! Seriously a major treat! ▼

I really appreciate your support. The blog is getting a lot of attention already--thank you for helping to raise awareness! I'm drinking tons of water and staying busy to keep my mind off of the hunger and cravings. The food looks great and is tasty, but the overall calories are pretty scarce. However, so far I'm doing great.

Take Action!

1) Please consider giving toward scholarships for children of the slums. Our goal is to cover a scholarship for 20 kids to get an education this next year. Every little bit helps! Currently at $25 of my $10,000 goal! First step: let's get to one scholarship: just $475 to go!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to Peace Gospel. If you're in the UK, use this link.

3) If you're compelled by my effort here, please share it with friends. One of the main goals is awareness. So if you can help with that, huge.

4) Leave me feedback. Please comment on this post, especially if you have any ideas about what I should try to cook with these ingredients I have available. I love hearing from you! It really helps!