Food for the Poor director `begs' for the impoverished of the world

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

Ferdinand Mahfood makes me uncomfortable. He is too earnest, too intense. I look into his eyes and want to turn away. I listen to his words and want to block my ears.

He tells me things I don't want to hear, about people I don't want to know, about a situation I cannot change.

He talks to me about Haiti, slowly, determinedly, explaining that even before the political problems in Haiti, the people were impoverished, that even before the embargo, they were starving to death.

Now things are far worse.

"When we go to Haiti and tour the slums, groups of 50, 60, 70 young men come up to us and ask for help. They ask what we can do to get them out of this predicament because they're not earning any money because of the embargo, and their wives and their children are hungry.

"Some 65 percent of the children are now suffering from severe malnutrition. It's terrible to see the way in which these people live their lives."

Mahfood runs Food for the Poor, a Florida-based charity that has in just 11 years purchased and shipped some $120 million of food to the needy in the Caribbean, Central America, South America and Africa. Food for the Poor is currently keeping thousands of Haitians from starving to death.

"When the embargo came on, we saw the need for a feeding program," explains Mahfood. "We feed 2,500 people every day. The people who are qualified to come are the old and the sick and the destitute. We give them a little tag and they need that tag to get in the line to get fed."

Mahfood wasn't always a giver. Most of his life, he was a taker, like most of us. Taking it all for granted. Taking life as it came.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, he worked in a family business with his brothers for years. He married and fathered three children. In 1972, he came to the United States and opened an import/export business in Pomano Beach, Fla. He was making a good living. He was living the good life.

And then God tapped him on the shoulder and asked for his help. It's that simple. He turned his business over to his brothers and began begging for the poor. This is the word he uses to describe what he does. He begs.

He begs to be heard. He begs to be heeded. He begs for people to feel their brothers' and sisters' needs. He begs for goods - building supplies, school equipment - and for the money to purchase the essentials that the poor need to survive.

"I think people need to realize the tremendous potential that they are and that they have," Mahfood says.

"It's hard to believe that God could use one man to help eight or nine countries, but it's possible. We're doing this. If more people would put their talents and their abilities to the service of the Lord, them maybe we'd have a better world."

His intensity never wavers.

Mahfood takes no salary from the charity he heads. This is unusual. Most administrators of charities are very well paid, six figures the norm, not the exception. He is supported by a pension from his old business. Ninety cents of every dollar Food for the Poor receives goes directly to the poor.

"I can tell you going back 11 years exactly where everything has gone, how much every nun, priest and pastor ever got. We have our own warehouses in Haiti, Jamaica, Guyana. The warehouses are managed by a manager who we employ, who is totally trustworthy," says Mahfood, who has used the skills he learned in business to run his charity.

Mahfood should be pleased with what's he's accomplished. And he is.

"I know a lot of good has been done," he admits. But he's focused on all that still needs to be done.

"In Haiti, the powers that be, their lifestyle, has not changed. All the things that they need are smuggled in from all over the world. The poor are the only people being hurt. It's terrible to see, but our hearts are hard."

It's words like these that make us uncomfortable. Because the words are true. Our hearts are hard.

Help them, is Mahfood's plea. He never says this. But it's there in his every word, in the way he lives his life, in his example.

Help them.

"As often as you did it for one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it for me.'- Matthew 25:40.