Feeding Center

The feeding center SGWM missionary Katy Poleynard helped establish now feeds the hungry bodies and souls of 80 children. Below, she tells the moving story about a young child’s brush with death.

She was staring at me with wide, sunken eyes. Her hands and feet were grossly swollen and I could see the pulse in her head through her thin, orange hair. As I pulled the blanket back further, I realized that the child I was holding was little more than a skeleton. She was the length of a 2-year-old, but I could feel every bone through her skin. I was suddenly afraid that my hands might crush her.

Earlier, I had rushed to thatch-roof hut where I was told that child was severely malnourished and near death. Her name was Jen.

Jen’s mother had died from malaria several months earlier, and the family was poor. Their diet consisted of maize, a food that is only given to horses in other parts of the world. Such a diet was no replacement for a mother’s milk and the child soon became malnourished until she refused to eat at all. As her body became weaker, it could not fight disease, and her father soon despaired for her life.

When I arrived, he was simply waiting for death to take her, feeling powerless to help his little girl.

I brought the report back to the SGWM missions team and to a Sudanese friend, Regina, whom I knew had experience working with malnourished children.

As we prayed for Jen, Regina and I knew God was leading us to open a small feeding center in order to care for malnourished children and to reach out with tangible love of Jesus to our community.

We were given the use of a small storage room at the community medical facility, where we housed Jen and her father, so that we could provide desperately needed nutrition and care for Jen. When we checked her in, she weighed only seven pounds. Regina took over caring for the child.

“I can manage this one. This one will not die,” she had said.

With milk, vitamins, minor medical treatment, and lots of love and prayers, Jen soon found her appetite and her smile again. In a matter of days, we began to see changes in Jen and her father, Matthew. We shared with Matthew about hope and salvation in Jesus, and, kneeling on the floor of the tine storage room, he gave his life to Christ.

The feeding center opened in 2000. Since then, the center has grown from a single room, to a fully staffed feeding center with a general ward, intensive care ward, outpatient offices and staff quarters, all effectively managed by Regina. Throughout the years, the feeding center has stretched to accommodate up to 50 babies in intensive care and another 200 in out patient care during times of crisis. The feeding center staff also holds classes about nutrition, sanitation, and other important issues in childcare. The mother are counseled and met with individually. They receive spiritual encouragement and prayer during their weekly visits.

Please pray for Regina and the staff at the feeding center, that God would provide the needed resources and that He would feed the hungry bodies and souls that come for treatment.

• Since it began in 1999, the center has grown from a single hut to four buildings. It serves up to 80 children, and only the most severe cases of malnutrition.
• The 70 worst cases get 24-hour feeding and are given milk, porridge and Unimix. Unimix is a blended food commonly used in famine areas of Africa, containing maize, walnuts, soy beans, sugar and vitamins. The then least severe are given Unimix to take home.

• Uganda Main
• Feeding Center
• Sunrise Primary School