After founding an organisation dedicated to fighting hunger in the United States, the Rev. Ray Buchanan created Stop Hunger Now to work against hunger on an international level. Since 1997, his organisation has set up partnerships in more than 40 countries and provided more than $20 million worth of aid, he told Lauren Pollock.

AN: How did you first become interested in this field?

RB: I was a United Methodist pastor for eight years. I became more and more aware that the pastorate was not fully my calling. I was very frustrated with the inability to get the majority of the congregation moving in a direction that I considered faithful to the call of the gospel, especially with regard to the poor and the hungry. Another Methodist pastor and I decided to devote the rest of our ministry to working with hunger. We started an organisation in the United States called the Society of St. Andrew, which was dedicated to dealing with domestic hunger. That was in 1979. In 1983, I started working on a programme called the Potato Project where we talked with local farmers in Virginia about them giving us potatoes they could not sell. That project just exploded. The Potato Project now has salvaged over 500 million pounds of produce that would have been thrown away just because it was cosmetically unacceptable for the market.

AN: Why did you leave the Society of St. Andrew?

RB: Basically, the Society of St. Andrew is one of the premier domestic hunger programmes in the United States. I was the co-founder and the co-director for 18 years. About three or four years before I left, I was getting burned out because the organisation was becoming so large. Instead of being able to actually deal with programmes, I was managing the people who ran the programmes or administering the managers of the people who ran the programmes. I was getting further and further removed as the staff got larger and larger. I went to Kenya for vacation to work building agricultural schools and to get my hands dirty again, to get back in touch with the poor. I fell in love with Kenya. That led me to working in Sierra Leone during the height of the war. The more I saw the needs internationally, the more I realised that there is a quantitative difference in hunger. I already knew that, but it’s one thing to know it intellectually. It’s another thing to experience it with your life.

AN: What difference did you see between the United States and your trips to Africa?

RB: In the United States, we have hunger and it’s horrible and it’s obscene. There is no need to have hunger in the richest, most affluent country on the planet. There’s a million people in the country that go hungry on a regular basis, but they go hungry for a day or two a month. When you go international like Sierra Leone or Somalia or Sudan, you have people who are watching their children die in front of them on a regular basis.

AN: How did Stop Hunger Now get off the ground?

RB: Being United Methodist, I am very familiar with John Wesley and one of his famous quotes is: "Go to those who have need. Go to those whose need is the greatest." That’s sort of the motto behind Stop Hunger Now. We’ve now started doing international work as the need is so much greater. Basically, when we started doing international work, one of our donors, Mr. John Hewitt, came to us and said if I would be willing to start a new organisation separate from the society of St. Andrew, he would provide the major funding for the first couple of years to get us up and running. Everybody in leadership at the Society of St. Andrew thought about it and prayed about it. You don’t walk away from an organisation that grew from two people to a staff of 50. It was a big decision, but we finally came to the awareness that by starting a new organisation we could get more food to more people faster than any other thing we could do. I left the Society of St. Andrew after 18 years and started again.

AN: What were your goals when you first started Stop Hunger Now?

RB: At that time, my donor said he’d give us a quarter of a million dollars that year and the next year. For an international relief programme, that is not a lot of money. My goal was that I wanted to take his half a million dollars and double it the first year. At the end of the year, I wanted to be able to say I did a half a million dollars worth of aid. That was my first goal. My second goal was that I wanted to work in at least five or six countries, so I could have a degree of legitimacy in saying I was an international hunger relief agency. You need to meet some kind of minimum standards. Those were my goals going into the first year, and at the end of the year, we had done a little over $5 million worth of aid and worked in 18 countries. We’re now approaching the end of our fourth year, and we’ve done about $20 million worth of aid at this point. We’ve worked in over 40 countries.

AN: What makes you proud of your work?

RB: One thing I would have to say I’m proud of is that our administrative and fundraising costs have remained under five percent of our total budget every year, so 95 cents out of every dollar goes directly to feeding hungry people. That’s something I think you just can’t emphasise enough. That means when the donor gives, the money really goes to where the donor wants it to go. What sets Stop Hunger Now apart from a lot of the larger organisations is that we’re entrepreneurial. We operate with a small staff and considerable flexibility for them to do whatever they need to do to get the job done. We focus on crisis aid around the world. We work in any area where there is chronic hunger and malnutrition.

AN: How does Stop Hunger Now operate?

RB: We are not an implementing organisation. I had been in hunger work for almost 20 years when I started Stop Hunger Now and what I learned is that when you partner with other organisations you really add to the strength, power and synergy of what you do. When Stop Hunger Now was started, I really wanted to make sure we actively partnered in every project we undertook, and that’s one way we are distinctive. The way we operate is that if there is a crisis or a need, I will visit the area myself in almost every instance and assess the situation to the best of my ability and try to find out what organisations are already active in the area. They could be indigenous or large, multinational organisations. That really doesn’t matter to me. I want to know which organisation is doing the best job in getting food to the people who need it the most. When I locate such an organisation, I immediately try to set up a partnership with them so that we can provide the resources they need to do a better job of what they do. This approach means we’re not an implementer. I don’t go into a situation and hire staff and set up an office and build infrastructure. All that is important in its place, but it takes so much time and costs so much money and involves so much bureaucratic red tape. I’m not interested in that. at they do. This approach means we’re not an implementer. I don’t go into a situation and hire staff and set up an office and build infrastructure. All that is important in its place, but it takes so much time and costs so much money and involves so much bureaucratic red tape. I’m not interested in that.

AN: Does this mean you get less credit for your work?

RB: I’m interested in getting food to hungry people. My donors are very smart, savvy, and understanding. They’re not dependent on Stop Hunger Now getting credit for everything we do. That means I’m able to go in and find an organisation that’s doing a good job and provide them resources. A lot of times we don’t get any publicity or media attention for doing what we’re doing, but we know that the part we played was essential in making relief happen. Most of the time, we provide funding because that’s the fastest way to provide help. If commodities, medicines, or food is needed, we will ship those, but that’s a last resort. It takes too much time and is too costly to do that unless there’s no other way. Right now in Afghanistan, there is a tremendous need for winter clothes and blankets. We’ve got seven or eight containers of that right now ready to ship. Our goal is simply to reach the people with the most need with the most food and to feed as many of them as we can as fast as possible.f them as we can as fast as possible.