The Christmas food basket program has become the most important project for Everyman volunteers

Each Christmas, Everyman and its volunteers select families with the lowest or zero income and distribute amongst them a basket with food provisions. Each basket feeds a family of four, for five days. Each product in the basket is carefully selected so they meet the protein and carbohydrate requirements for five the period.

We receive hundreds of applications for the relatively small number of baskets we currently have the resources to supply. Our volunteers have the very difficult and comfortable job identifying and selecting those most in need. We know that the number of households who qualify is greater than what we can offer. To make the selections, we first determine how many baskets we have the resources to make; then we inform different institutions and radio stations so they can make nominations; then our volunteers investigate the family’s economic position; and then a selection committee of our volunteers allocates the baskets to the families with the greatest need.

This project has become the most important amongst our volunteers because it really impacts a poor family’s ability to have food for their children at this special time of the year. The volunteers hope that Everyman will take the food basket program to another level.

Omar comments: “It is heartbreaking to see how the terribly poor live.”