Rick’s Journal
Rick McNary of El Dorado, Kansas founded Numana with the help and vision from his fellow Numana board of directors and serves at the helm as CEO. As pastor of his church for over 20 years, he led numerous mission teams to Africa and Central America for hunger relief. Because of this outreach, he saw firsthand the need of food around the world. Read about his journey to continue feeding the starving below.
Why Don’t We Help the Hungry In America?
“Why don’t we help hungry people here in America?” Grab your coffee and I’ll explain why we have focused our attention not only on global hunger, but also the exciting model of hunger relief we are working on for the U.S. In fact, the model just won a National Innovation Award from the Alliance to [...]
Does Our Food Hurt the Local Economy?
We all know it is better to teach a man to fish than it is to give a man a fish. However, sometimes you have to give people fish today because they are starving, although your ultimate goal is to teach them to fish. We like to do both.
We are often asked this important question: [...]
How Anger Almost Ruined My Desire to Save the Starving
With a mixture of Scot/Irish heritage, I live life with a great deal of passion. While I might look like Elmer Fudd, I have the disposition of Yosemite Sam. After my encounter with the starving little girl, I became angry at the unfairness of life. Starvation made me angry.
As I began my quest to eliminate [...]
How to start a Riot
When I first took teams to Nicaragua, I learned very quickly how to start a riot. We would take a truckload of food, clothes, medicine, and toys into a village and call the people to come. We had great intentions, but very poor understanding of providing relief. Naïve turned to stupid pretty quickly.
Imagine being one [...]
How Poverty Assaults Our Senses
For forty years, I had only known poverty based upon my two senses: sight and sound. I saw photos in magazines or watched the documentaries and heard the sounds of poverty, but it wasn’t until my first trip outside the U.S. that I actually had all five senses assaulted with poverty.
In addition to the sights [...]
Invest in Women: The key to eliminating hunger
“Give 5 dollars to a woman and she will feed and educate her children. Give 5 dollars to a man and he will spend it on himself.”
It is widely regarded in the “hunger space” that the best investment to alleviate hunger is in the lives of women. Quite often, in developing countries, men are not [...]
Kansas Hunger Dialogue
I returned form the Universities Fighting World Hunger summit in Honduras just in time for the Kansas Hunger Dialogue. To refresh your memory, Numana started the KHD in partnership with UFWH last year. It was our attempt to pull the post-secondary institutions of higher learning in Kansas together. Our first year was a smashing success [...]
Not only hope, but a plan – UFWH 7th Annual Summit
Blog on UFWH comments
“After working all my professional life with poor people, I am more optimistic than ever before that there are solutions to global hunger. Poor people aren’t stupid, they just need opportunity.” Dr. Bill Brand, USAID
Being at the 7th annual Universities Fighting World Hunger Summit and exposed to the experts in agriculture and [...]
Universities Fighting World Hunger Summit 7th Annual Summit
Some time ago, the World Food Programme tapped the shoulder of Drs. June Henton and Harriet Giles of Auburn University to begin an attempt to rally universities together to fight world hunger. Dr. Henton, Dean of College of Human Sciences, is world renowned for her work in the hunger space. Realizing that the future of [...]
Eagle Scout Wins HOA Award for Numana Packaging Event
When I was 13 years old, it never occurred to me I could do something to feed hungry people. I knew there were hungry children ready to eat what I didn’t because my Mom would try to guilt me into eating spinach.
Some time ago, Kaleb Hansen, a 13 year-old Boy Scout in Olathe, Kansas decided [...]