Feeding Hope Session

FEEDING HOPE

CONNECT - for mid-week/Home League groups

Service Session - Helping-Hand Appeal Link

Food security: Focusing on supporting families and their communities, feeding hope to farmers now and for generations to come.

Summary

Explore food security
Fundraising ideas
In what ways can we be sowers of hope?

The Helping-Hand Appeal exists to raise awareness and funds for international community-based projects. This session was originally part of a former Helping-Hand Appeal focusing on food security.

The Salvation Army is a global movement that supports community development programmes around the world – helping people to overcome the poverty and injustice they are experiencing, and enabling them to build a better life and future. The Salvation Army United Kingdom and Ireland Territory partners with other territories and supports international development projects which fall within six focus areas: food security, clean water, income generation, anti-human trafficking, emergency response and gender justice.

Food security: it’s not only about growing food – it’s about nurturing land and harvesting hope.

When a person doesn’t have access to enough food they are classified as being ‘food insecure’. It is the state of being without reliable access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food.

Food insecurity is now a growing problem. For decades, the world has made huge progress in reducing the total number of people who experience food insecurity, but in recent years this trend has reversed.

Ask members to share:

Their favourite – or least favourite – food or meal.
Any memories that certain foods evoke.
What tips members have for budget cooking?

DISCUSS

Share the information and video about food security with members.

Discuss the impact food security has on people– individuals, families and communities.

FUNDRAISE

And don’t forget to plan how to fundraise this year!

Some suggestions:

Create a Just Giving page for your group.
Do a sponsored event like walking, knitting, yoga, bake-athon.
Bake to order – send out an order form listing cupcakes or cake slices.
Sell ‘bake-your-own cookies’ – jars filled with baking ingredients with the recipe on the attached label.
Run a ‘bake along with’ class.
Run a competition with a food theme; sell quiz sheets, anagram puzzles or cryptic crossword clues.
Sell decorated pots with vegetables growing in them.
Challenge your group to make vegetable/fruit characters in a fun setting or create a picture using food; send in photos and use these to make: a calendar, bookmarks, postcards, magnets, an online gallery (with a donations link).

MARK 4:1-20

Jesus tells the story of a farmer who sows seed on different types of ground: the path, rocky places, among thorns, and on good soil. The fate of the seed depends on where it lands – some is eaten by birds, some withers, some is choked, and some flourishes and multiplies.

The challenges faced by the sower – birds, rocks, thorns – mirror the obstacles that communities face in achieving food security:

The path (seed eaten by birds)

Represents those who never get a chance to benefit from the resources or knowledge available. This could be communities cut off from aid or education, where hunger persists because help never reaches them.

Rocky places (seed withers)

Those who receive help but lack the support to sustain it. For example, farmers who get seeds but lack water, tools, or training, so their crops fail.

Among thorns (seed choked)

Those whose progress is stifled by ongoing challenges: poverty, conflict, environmental degradation, or market instability. Even when food is available, other pressures can prevent families from escaping hunger.

Good soil (seed flourishes)

This is the hope that, with the right conditions – community support, education, resources, and faith – people can overcome adversity and build a sustainable future.

What kind of ‘soil’ are we cultivating in our own lives and communities?
How can we help others overcome the obstacles to food security?
In what ways can we be sowers of hope – sharing resources, knowledge, and encouragement – so that all may flourish?

All these people we have met today have known difficulties in day-to-day survival, but there is still hope for the future.

A Zimbabwean proverb states, ‘You cannot tell a hungry child that you gave him food yesterday.’ And by working together, by raising awareness and fundraising, we can help nurture the land and harvest hope.

BENEDICTION

‘And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.

(Philippians 4:19)

SASB 26 ‘Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father’
- Instrumental lyric video by The Salvation Army Video Songbook (3:37)
- Lyric video by ExaltHIMvdo (5:10)
- Official live performance by Carrie Underwood and CeCe Winans (press cc for lyrics) (4:20)
SASB 861 ‘In Christ alone my hope is found’
- Brass instrumental lyric video by Salvation Army Sale (3:55)
- Lyric video feat Adrienne Liesching by Hadleigh Baptist Church (5:48)
- Lyric video with Keith and Krystin Getty (4:18)
SASB 662 ‘My hope is built on nothing less’
- Instrumental lyric video by The Salvation Army Songbook (1:47)
- Lyric video ‘On Christ the Solid Rock’ by R Sebastian (3:24)
- Lyric video ‘My hope is built on nothing less (Cornerstone)’ by Hillsong (4:41)