On July 18, 2009 the Mighty Eagle Foundation held a charity event which main goal was to provide 300 packages of rice and cooking oil to 300 beneficiaries. This event was held at Wisma Hexa, a meeting venue located in Pondok Gede sub-district of Bekasi district in West Java province.

The event started with some live music which lasted for about an hour, continued with half an hour of motivational speech before the distribution of rice and cooking oil was carried out at the end.

The beneficiaries were men and women who made their living by picking waste in various areas, mainly around the city Bekasi. They were informed about this event through an invitation that was distributed only 14 days beforehand. These invitations also served as a coupon they later traded for the rice and oil.

To gather the participants of the event, the Mighty Eagle Foundation provided small mini-buses to transport them from their homes to the venue. Transportation was also provided for them to return to their homes.

Originally, the Mighty Eagle Foundation only printed 300 coupons, aiming to distribute only 300 packages to 300 persons/families. However, at the event, many people without the invitation/coupons also arrived. To address these unmet needs, the Mighty Eagle Foundation listed their names and plans to provide them with packages in the following weeks. The number of people who attended the event without coupons amounted to 600 adults, not including children.

This event was made possible through the donation of 32 people who provided cash donation ranging from Rp.200,000 to Rp.1,600,000. The total donation received is Rp.13,020,000, which was used to purchase ten sacks of rice (each approximately 50 kilograms) 300 liters of cooking oil, snacks, bread, water and milk, to pay for the venue and also the band. The rice and oil was further divided into personal packages. Each personal package consisted of two kilograms of rice and one liter of oil.

After having divided the rice and oil into personal packages (2kg of rice and 1 lt of oil), there was an unexplained miraculous surplus of two sacks of rice. Up to this point we had had 296 packages with each 2kg of rice and 1 liter of oil. The remaining 4 liters of oil was unfortunately wasted as the plastic bags they came in from the supplier were torn on the way to the packaging place. The remaining 2 sacks of rice were then divided into more personal packages, consisting of 3 kilograms of rice each. These personal packages were meant to be set aside from the other packages that had cooking oil in them. There were additional 30 packages with rice only, to prepare in the case of more people coming than expected.

When we transported the last car full of packages to the venue, we mistakenly mixed about 10 packages of rice only with 25 other packages that had oil in them. We unloaded the car and searched for the 10 only rice packages among the total of 35 packages that was the last badge to go in order to set them apart. Strangely, none of the packages had only rice in them! We loaded the last car with 10 rice-only packages and 25 rice-and-oil packages but we arrived at the venue with 35 packages of rice and oil.

In addition to the free rice and cooking oil, we had also provided 300 bags of snacks with bread and water for adults and 200 bags of snacks, bread and milk for children. The people who came were more than we had invited. An additional 100 people including children were present and we had to feed them as well. Half in faith and half in worry about potential riots; we started handing out the bags. Strangely again, the team that distributed everything to adults and children returned with leftovers and as we collected them, we had a box full of bags for adults and one box full of bags for children! (1 box contained about 8-12 bags).

In total, during the event, the Mighty Eagle Foundation has prepared 295 packages of rice and oil to, 30 packages of rice only, 300 packages of food for adults and 200 packages of food for children. But in the end, God had provided enough for 600 people with leftovers of 1 box of bags of food for adults and 1 box of bags of food for children.

For information on donor response, download the report here.