The Tribune

Bahamas Feeding Network volunteers and Moseff House Ministry will partner for a highly anticipated community gathering, providing words of encouragement and hundreds of hot meals on November 10 at the little cottage called Moseff House on Fox Hill Road.

The event will be the second in a new series of second Sunday of the month feedings, reviving a popular pre-Covid tradition of volunteers prepping, cooking and plating piping hot lunches packed with nutrition and served with love.  

The Sunday feedings add a second day of the week to the partnering organisations’ work to ease the pain of hunger. Moseff House Ministry has been funding Thursday feedings for the past year. 

When the initial Sunday feeding was held in October, it once again brought together a community, united in prayer in a church without walls and united in need for a meal that would stave off the hunger that for many is a daily struggle. 

The kitchen in the little cottage, the outdoor grills, the bustling volunteers this time were joined by a group of young people wanting to give back. Volunteers stirred and hauled huge vats of peas ’n rice. Others gently turned well-marinated chicken on the grill. Neighbours gathered, openly grateful. 

“This is wonderful,” said Sean Perigord. “There ain’ no shame in this. I got $4 in my pocket, now I got food and I can use the $4 to put gas in the car.” 

Volunteers knit together the sturdy fabric of the two non-profits, BFN and Moseff House. People like Liz, who has been helping feed the hungry for 18 years, even before the feeding network was a dream. She shows up at 4 am on feeding days to help prep the dozens of chickens, season the peas ‘n rice, marinate the beets. A few hours later, she heads to her day job at a nearby primary school, and at the end of the school day, she’s back at BFN. 

People like Recina Ferguson Scully or Scully as everyone calls her, the woman known as the heart and soul of the Bahamas Feeding Network, a retired teacher who discovered her real passion is taking care of those who would go to bed hungry if she could not find something for them or their family to eat. 

“This, feeding people, knowing they will not go to bed hungry, is what I love,” says Scully, between the hugs she is getting and giving others. 

Many of the volunteers have been with BFN since it started in 2013 with a dozen churches and feeding organisations as beneficiaries. Now there are more than 100 and BFN has provided over four million meals. 

“These are the people who make it possible, the compassionate volunteers who cook on Thursdays and now one Sunday a month and pack groceries and field calls from the sick and hungry all week,” said Dianne Bingham, Moseff House trustee. “We could not do what we do without them. More importantly, without them The Bahamas would be a far harder place for the needy.” 

BFN executive director Nicolette Archer added praise for the volunteers. 

“While we work hard every day to raise funds to keep the feeding going and ease the pain of hunger, the volunteers work hard to deliver the food parcels, the coupons, pour their energy into creating hot meals,” said Archer.

For many, the resumption of Sunday hot meals and the presence of former BFN executive director Philip Smith, now a board member and executive chairman of the Agricultural Development Organization, made it feel like old times. 

Said one recipient holding a bag filled with six meals to take to family and friends, “Thank God for Bahamas Feeding Network and this place (Moseff House) and the rest of the good people in the world. No matter how bad it gets, it makes you believe.”