In the Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association Relief News Update from the United States…
On September 28, Hurricane Ian swept through southwest Florida, United States, leaving behind massive destruction, more than two million people without power, and over 130 fatalities.
With Supreme Master Ching Hai’s love and concern for the afflicted, our relief team immediately set off to the most affected region, to serve hot vegan meals to the emergency first responders and those evacuated to shelters. Using generators, the team prepared and delivered in total over 22,000 hot meals, including over 200 to the staff of Bonita Springs City Hall.
“I’m Mike Gibson, Deputy Mayor of Bonita Springs. We’re here today to thank our friends at Supreme Master Ching Hai [International Association]. They came down right after Hurricane Ian, and started cooking up food and helping out however they could. And every day since, they’ve been bringing us food. It’s been a great asset to the city.”
“It’s just been an amazing blessing, that we’ve received during a really hard time, for our community to have warm meals. So, we just really appreciate people taking their time to come down and enter into a crisis zone and make sure that we have warm food so that we can focus on our work, which is helping the community through this.”
The team also coordinated with Tony Mansolillo, founder of the nonprofit Feed Thy Neighbor, to provide this charitable organization with 2,000 vegan meals, which were distributed to people in need.
“We’ve been out every day since the hurricane, averaging two to three thousand meals a day. I could have never done the job that we did well without the help of your organization. We’re thankful for what we got from you guys.”
In the city of Naples, Mayor Teresa Heitmann was delighted to receive the relief team’s vegan meals. She informed other local organizations of the team’s prepared food, which led to distributions at Saint Mathew’s House (820 meals), Naples Fire Department (650 meals), and Naples Community Hospital (4,000 meals).
“I’m Teresa Heitmann, the mayor for the city of Naples, Florida. I’m happy to say that I have friends, who came up and stepped up to the plate and brought meals to our first responders, and over to the Naples Community Hospital. If we didn’t have heroes like those who were behind the scenes, preparing meals that were safe, we probably would have had a lot of recovery teams that were weaker than they are at this moment. So we’re really grateful that you came into our community and helped out.”
Those who received the warm and timely vegan meals enjoyed them and were awed at the loving generosity.
“We had a bunch of code enforcement officers. This was the first day the meals arrived, and before we could even send an email out saying that there was warm food here, they had grabbed it and took it into their meeting space, and they were eating and they were so grateful.”
“Vegan food, to me, it’s been surprising how delicious it is. Everybody’s kind of fallen in love with it, and very thankful for it.”
“They loved it. They love your food.”
“I think it’s delicious. And I think that it’s probably the way to go for the rest of the world. Vegans are heroes, and they’re definitely heroes for me.”
We couldn’t agree more! Our relief team members are deeply grateful to Supreme Master Ching Hai (vegan) for Her love, support and prayers for the hurricane affected. We also appreciate the quick and dedicated rescue and recovery response of both governmental and nonprofit organizations, to assist the hurricane victims. In God’s blessings, may the kind people of Florida, United States, soon return to the comfort and peace of their normal lives.
