ATLANTA – The children of Huguenot Road Baptist Church in Richmond, Va., each decorated a Chinese rice box, plastering stickers on all sides, making it their own. Then, they took their sticker-splashed boxes home and collected pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters to help in the fight against world hunger.

"Hunger is probably something the children haven’t experienced, but it’s something they can imagine," said Dotty Shepard, the church’s mission team coordinator.

World Food Day is Oct. 16, and it highlights the hunger problem that affects more than 800 million people, according to David Harding, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s international coordinator for emergency response and transformational development. "It’s an opportunity to help people focus on the issue of hunger and how Christians can be involved in poverty awareness. It’s an invitation to actively be engaged in alleviating poverty and hunger right where you area and in trouble spots around the world through partners like CBF," he said.

The money that Huguenot Road Baptist Church raises will be split between CBF Global Missions and other missions organizations, Shepard said.

The Fellowship has a multi-faceted approach to the complex problem of global hunger: responding to emergencies, advocating for more humane policies and sustainable development. The Fellowship has responded to hunger crises in Sudan, North Korea and Liberia. Global Missions field personnel have encouraged marginalized hill tribes in Thailand to adopt sustainable agro/forestry methods and introduced drip irrigation kits among Arsi people in Ethiopia.

"When people give money, they think about feeding someone hungry right now, but the education is so important. It makes a difference down the road," Shepard said.

More than 150 countries will observe World Food Day, which was started in 1945 to commemorate the founding of the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The Fellowship is a U.N. registered non-governmental organization.

For more information on the Fellowship’s Global Missions projects, visit www.thefellowship.info. For hunger resources in your church, visit The CBF Store on the Web or call (888) 801-4223.

CBF is a fellowship of Baptist Christians and churches who share a passion for the Great Commission and a commitment to Baptist principles of faith and practice. The Fellowship’s mission is to serve Christians and churches as they discover and fulfill their God-given mission.