We want to tell you about Jenna and The Bean Project.
This past spring, Jenna was a high school senior at Pugwash District High School in Pugwash, Nova Scotia. With a big heart and enthusiasm to accomplish goals with great importance, The Bean Project was developed.
But first you ought to know how this project sprouted…..
In December of 2012, Jenna and her mother, Joanne, volunteered for their second time at RHFH. Jenna volunteered at God’s Littlest Angels Orphanage for two weeks prior to her arrival at RHFH. Having already been to Haiti in 2011, Jenna had developed a passion for helping the Haitian people. Already working on raising funds to help the children at GLA, Jenna’s eyes were opened to another great need that was in the Cazale community. During her one-week stay at RHFH, God impressed upon her to do something. And she did!
Jenna explains it –
“Our original goal was to raise $650, which would provide everyone in the food box program with 2 weeks’ supply of beans. I created a “beanstalk” poster to chart our progress, with each section of the stalk representing one bag (we needed six) of beans. I am the charity representative on my school’s student council, so this was one of the fundraisers I wanted to do after I returned from my trip because that was something everyone was saying was needed, and I knew that donating to RHFH was a very smart move.”
“Every junior & senior lunch hour we would sit at a table in front of the poster. We had little “beans” cut out of brown cardstock, and whenever someone donated over $5 they would get their name written on the bean and placed in a drawing to win a $25 movie theater pass. In about a month, we raised $650.” Jenna says her school only has around 240 students, so she was pretty impressed with the success of the fundraiser.
Jenna, on the left, said, “I had a lot of help from my friends with the fundraising, but the most help was from my cousin James Russell (pictured on the right) and Miriam MacEwan who did the fundraiser every junior lunch.”
The local (and only!) grocery store in Jenna’s hometown, The Pugwash Co-op, contributed to The Bean Project, too. In fact, the grocery store’s donation tripled the goal of $650 to almost $2,000! Wow! The Student Council then provided the funds to make the total an even $2, 000 as well as chipping in the $90 currency difference.
Fast forward a couple of months and a couple thousand miles……
And here they are! Nutritious, protein-rich beans that are being distributed to the Real Hope for Haiti Foodbox Program recipients!
The community members from Cazale that are enrolled in the Foodbox Program, people that Jenna saw with her own eyes back in December, are now benefiting from her efforts. God spoke. She listened….and took action! Bodies nourished, and Jesus’ name proclaimed!
If you’d like to watch a video that Jenna created for The Bean Project, you can click here to find it.
We also would like to mention that this spring, Jenna was named as one of Canada’s top teen philanthropists for her volunteer work. You can read an article about this honor here. Her work at GLA and RHFH were considered in the naming of this award. Congrats, Jenna! She has just started her first year of college, studying advertising. We hope that God continues to inspire and equip her to do His work. We should all take notice of this example of faith, hard work, and how God provides…..always in ways far greater that we could ever imagine! To Him be all the praise and glory!