El Dorado man in business of feeding hungry kids

Last Update: 1/05 1:18 pm

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El Dorado man in business of feeding hungry kids

EL DORADO, Kansas – This week close to 2,000 people showed up at the El Dorado Civic Center to lend a hand to feed some very needy kids as one man works to reach his goal to stamp out hunger.

Throughout his adult life, Rick McNary has wanted to help people. He served as a church pastor for 20 years and he’d probably still be doing that today had it not been for a trip he took to Central America.

“Eight years ago I was in the country of Nicaragua on a mission trip and met my first starving child, a little five-year-old girl who asked me to pick her up and she whispered in my ear, ‘Would you feed me, I'm hungry,’” said McNary, founder of Numana, Inc.

That one small whisper changed his path from that day forward.

“It broke my heart and I decided from that moment on to feed hungry people and to get as many people in America to help me do it,” he said.

McNary’s quest to feed the hungry has resulted in Numana, Inc, a non-profit organization where the donors do more than just write checks.

“Numana provides a new option,” McNary explained. “People can of course write a check to help pay for the product that they package, but they then have the option of coming out, rolling up their sleeves, putting on gloves and packaging the food that the starving children will receive.”

And that’s what has volunteers packing into the El Dorado Civic Center. They are packaging food bound for school children in Haiti. Their photos are projected on a wall as the bags are filled.

Volunteers make up an assembly. They take a bag, add soy protein, dehydrated vegetables, vitamins, and rice and from there it comes down and gets weighed and sealed. One bag ready to go to Haiti equals six meals.

The volunteers come from all over.

Pete Witt and his family drove for more than two hours to lend a hand.

“I think it means a lot more being hands on instead of writing a check.”

Numana will send 285,120 packaged meals to Haiti. That’s how many will fit into a 40-foot long shipping container. But some of the food won’t be going overseas. It will stay here to help the hungry in our own back yard.

“You'll see tubs around here full of canned goods and non-perishables so we'll be able to replenish local food banks and be able to feed starving children around the world,” McNary said.

“All ships rise with the same tide,” McNary likes to say. And with the outpouring of help he’s received, it looks like the tide is coming in.

With the help of the Salvation Army, the food packages will be distributed to about 10,000 school children in Haiti.

For more information on Numana or how you can get involved, click on Newslinks.

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