Operation Feed Sosua - COVID-19 Response
Donation protected
In Sosua most people have been sent home from work. Most businesses have been closed. We are under a toca de quedo (lock down) from 5pm and families are really feeling it. It benefits us all to stay inside. But its hard when you're hungry and you have no money...
**This is a call to action to help us feed the people of Sosua.** If each community works to help the people in their community who really need it - we can come out of this thing on top!
This started 3 weeks ago delivering food to 60 families at a time. Thanks to your donations we have been able to feed over 800 families in Sosua in the past 3 weeks and need to keep it going until we are past COVID and people are back to work.
The government food distribution that does occur is only in some communities and is not enough to cover the massive population we have in Sosua (45,000+). We have a massive number of people who normally work who haven't been able to for the past month. They don't have the government solidarity card mentioned by the government and many were sent home without pay.
The situation has become dire as we see in the behavior of people each time we go out into the barrios.
The math. So as we have gone along we have begun to better understand our true costs using online payment mechanisms. Here are the dollars and cents for complete transparency. The account connected to GoFundMe is in Canada. From CIBC bank we receive an exchange rate of 28 to 1. From the banks here we pay about 120RD-240RD for each transaction of 10,000RD. We try to use Ban Reservas which is cheapest but sometimes they run out of money.
Putting this into practice:
• Every 10,000RD results in a withdraw of about $280 + a fee of $4.28CDN-$8.57CDN for a total of $285 CDN call it
Each bag has a budget of:
• 130RD for 5LB bag of rice (give or take 10RD)
• 60RD for sardines (usually 3 small cans)
• 65RD for a lb of beans (give or take 5RD)
• 32RD for a small bottle of cooking oil
• Total 287RD or about **$10.20 Canadian per family – larger families will receive 2 bags depending on how many people are in the home**
E.G. THIS MEANS EVERY $100 YOU DONATE MEANS THAT 10 FAMILIES WILL RECIEVE FOOD.
In addition to this we buy additional things like:
• Bags of baby formula if we see babies – depending on donations because this is expensive
• Cleaning products – we have had a couple of people reach out to us needing cleaning products to keep their homes sanitary – bleach, soap etc.
• Baby formula period! We have had young mothers reach out to us and tell us they don’t even care if they have food for themselves, they just need baby formula
So this means that to do 150 bags/families we spend approx:
• 43,050RD (we have in some instances been able to get this down to 37,000RD) = $1,537.50 + 4-5 bank transactions approx. $20.00 for a total of approx. $1550.00CDN each time we go out. That doesn’t even include when we bring formula (which the time before last added about $400 to the bill).
Even though we started our campaign with a goal to raise $10,000CDN we have no idea how long COVID would impact us and its clear that our people will be struggling for at least the next couple of months so we need to keep it going until this has passed.
Our goal is to help families have food until things get back to normal so we if, by the grace of god, we achieve our goal we will likely increase the goal afterward in proportion to our communities needs. We thank you all for your support and hope that you can continue supporting us - we really can take all the help we can get and are dealing with a very heavily populated community XOXO
Food will be distributed in Sosua Abajo, Maranatha, Charamicos, Batey, La Union, La Mulata and other small communities in the immediate area.
To follow our journey, view footage and photos of distribution as well as receipts for spending please follow our Facebook page Operation Feed Sosua on Facebook
**This is a call to action to help us feed the people of Sosua.** If each community works to help the people in their community who really need it - we can come out of this thing on top!
This started 3 weeks ago delivering food to 60 families at a time. Thanks to your donations we have been able to feed over 800 families in Sosua in the past 3 weeks and need to keep it going until we are past COVID and people are back to work.
The government food distribution that does occur is only in some communities and is not enough to cover the massive population we have in Sosua (45,000+). We have a massive number of people who normally work who haven't been able to for the past month. They don't have the government solidarity card mentioned by the government and many were sent home without pay.
The situation has become dire as we see in the behavior of people each time we go out into the barrios.
The math. So as we have gone along we have begun to better understand our true costs using online payment mechanisms. Here are the dollars and cents for complete transparency. The account connected to GoFundMe is in Canada. From CIBC bank we receive an exchange rate of 28 to 1. From the banks here we pay about 120RD-240RD for each transaction of 10,000RD. We try to use Ban Reservas which is cheapest but sometimes they run out of money.
Putting this into practice:
• Every 10,000RD results in a withdraw of about $280 + a fee of $4.28CDN-$8.57CDN for a total of $285 CDN call it
Each bag has a budget of:
• 130RD for 5LB bag of rice (give or take 10RD)
• 60RD for sardines (usually 3 small cans)
• 65RD for a lb of beans (give or take 5RD)
• 32RD for a small bottle of cooking oil
• Total 287RD or about **$10.20 Canadian per family – larger families will receive 2 bags depending on how many people are in the home**
E.G. THIS MEANS EVERY $100 YOU DONATE MEANS THAT 10 FAMILIES WILL RECIEVE FOOD.
In addition to this we buy additional things like:
• Bags of baby formula if we see babies – depending on donations because this is expensive
• Cleaning products – we have had a couple of people reach out to us needing cleaning products to keep their homes sanitary – bleach, soap etc.
• Baby formula period! We have had young mothers reach out to us and tell us they don’t even care if they have food for themselves, they just need baby formula
So this means that to do 150 bags/families we spend approx:
• 43,050RD (we have in some instances been able to get this down to 37,000RD) = $1,537.50 + 4-5 bank transactions approx. $20.00 for a total of approx. $1550.00CDN each time we go out. That doesn’t even include when we bring formula (which the time before last added about $400 to the bill).
Even though we started our campaign with a goal to raise $10,000CDN we have no idea how long COVID would impact us and its clear that our people will be struggling for at least the next couple of months so we need to keep it going until this has passed.
Our goal is to help families have food until things get back to normal so we if, by the grace of god, we achieve our goal we will likely increase the goal afterward in proportion to our communities needs. We thank you all for your support and hope that you can continue supporting us - we really can take all the help we can get and are dealing with a very heavily populated community XOXO
Food will be distributed in Sosua Abajo, Maranatha, Charamicos, Batey, La Union, La Mulata and other small communities in the immediate area.
To follow our journey, view footage and photos of distribution as well as receipts for spending please follow our Facebook page Operation Feed Sosua on Facebook
Organizer
Courtney Jewell
Organizer
Barrie, ON