"If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday." –Isaiah 58:10

This post is part of a series about Feed My Starving Children meals reaching hard to reach places. See the first installment HERE.  

A container of life-saving MannaPack™ meals is being directly shipped to Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, for the first time ever.

Venture, a faithful partner of Feed My Starving Children, has been working on the Thai-Burma border for 15 years, but this is the first time it has been able to ship meals directly to the country.

Tough Things

Venture’s tagline is “We do tough things for people in tough places,” which may well be an understatement.

The organization serves thousands of people along the border of Thailand and Burma, which it calls the epicenter for trafficking, sex slavery, child soldiers, extreme poverty and refugees.

Venture offers scholarships, after-school programming and English education to vulnerable children and empower them to become the next generation of Christian leaders through evangelism, Bible training, prayer and discipleship.

These programs prevent some families from selling their older children to pay for food for the younger siblings.

In partnership with FMSC, Venture is able to feed 9,000 people a day.

The Rohingya

Close to 400,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar in the past few weeks due to intense conflict.

The Rohingya, largely Muslim, have been called one of the most persecuted populations in the world. They've lived in Myanmar for centuries.

The country has 135 official ethnic groups, but the Rohingya are not on that list and have been denied citizenship in Myanmar since 1982, according to a primer published by Al Jazeera.

Up to 400,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since August 25, according to UNICEF. About 60 percent are children.

Tough Places

After years of getting FMSC meals across the border from Thailand to Myanmar, imagine the feeling Venture staff must have had when they received word that, for the first time ever, they could ship life-saving meals directly to beloved people in this country – including the Rohingya.

They updated their followers on Facebook:

“Somehow, God has made a way and we are celebrating his Glory as, for the first time ever, a container of Feed My Starving Children meals are being delivered directly into Myanmar. Can you join us in praying for this big first step in direct aid into Myanmar?”

We are praising God with Venture and praying for the meals to safely arrive in the hands of people in Myanmar. Please pray that the power of food will continue to reach the tough places, where children deserve to not only survive, but to dream for a future. As you read this, there are regions that FMSC is currently unable to reach. Please join us in praying for open doors and partnerships in those regions.

Photo by Sara Aho, courtesy of Venture