Help with Food
Star of Hope delivered in autumn 2003 supplies to various orphanages, hospitals and other institutions in North Korea when it was a famine there. I was there to inspect so deliveries gone as they should. It was exciting and a whole new world, one can say for sure.
One of the places that we have delivered goods to was "Nampo City Children Orphanage." They had received cooking oil, sugar and dietary supplements that would have been enough 12-18 months, clothes and shoes to all the kids for at least a year. The orphanage director was very grateful.
90% of the 106 children who lived at the orphanage were orphans, the others come from very poor backgrounds where parents could not take care of their children. All children were aged 6-7 years, but they looked much younger. Clearly they had suffered / or were suffering from malnutrition.
There were enough staff but they had a lack of resources but did their best to take care of the children as good as they could.
One of the children was Kim, 7 years old. He, like all other children in the classroom, was very shy when I came in and was introduced. Kim was an orphan, and he had lived at the orphanage a few years. He had shelter and food for the day, which was nice to see. The meeting was short because we had a very tight schedule, but I wonder to this day what happened to Kim and the other children. It is of course virtually impossible to get some information about that, but it would be interesting to know.
