The Snack Project

My first trip to San Pedro Sula, Honduras was March of 2006. My training is as a registered dietitian with a speciality in treating eating disorders. During my work with eating disorders, I had become an expert in treating severe forms of malnutrition. I thought that one of the things I could do during my first trip, was work in a hospital and teach the doctors and nurses how to nutritionally treat the different types of malnutrition. I got one or two sentences into my presentation when I learned that there were not any special diets in the hospital; the hospital did not have enough money to feed the chidlren and many children were crying themselves to sleep at night from hunger. My very American brain had difficulty imagining a hospital without enough food, let alone soap and toilet paper as well. The children in this hospital are all malnourished, at least half have some sort of cancer (usually leukemia) and they are the poorest of the poor in their country. The hospital is Dr. Mario Catarino Rivas Noroccidental Hospital, one of two public hospitals in Honduras. I told my friend, Pastor Jose Luis Ordonez Sanchez, that this was not acceptable and that something needed to be done...he agreed. Twenty four hours after discovering that the children in the hospital went to bed hungry every night, I had the permission from the head of the hospital, the head pediatrician, the head nurse, and the dietary dept, to start a snack program for the children. As of November 1, 2008, almost 90,000 snacks have been served to these kids; the fundraising has been one bag of coffee at a time along with some very generous donors.

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