How can one send food, directly, to people who are in need?

You may want to opt for something like kiva.org if you’re interested in this kind of personal contact – it allows you to give money to men or women trying to start small business in developing countries. The loan is paid back and can then be lent to other businesses.

This may be a more effective way to have personal contact while fighting hunger – these businesses allow families to be independent, and will go further than food alone.

I agree with @iamthemob. Don’t send food directly overseas. It’s just too risky on many different levels. A lasting contribution would be to invest in their economy.

But if you want the satisfaction of direct contact, there are many options much closer to home.

There’s a homeless guy who hangs out the back of Walgreens by my house. When I see him out, and am going into the store, I’ll make sure to buy him some tea and chips.

Buy an extra value meal and run it down to the first homeless guy in the park you see. We sometimes make up extra Thanksgiving Day plates with leftovers and take them to the homeless parks.

Take a few cans of food to the local shelter.

There’s pah-lenty of hungry tummies right in our own neighborhoods.

There is also the wonderful Heifer Project. You can send goats, llamas, chickens, sheep, bees, cows,camels, water buffalos,etc. to families in third-world countries. They have the means, then, to generate food and items to sell (wool, eggs, milk, honey, etc.)

We gave my mother recently half a llama. Another contributor or donated the other half; thus the family received the entire animal.

That’s AWESOME @gailcalled!

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies: My mother, who has no sense of humor, actually laughed when we asked her which half of the llama she wanted to claim.

I see now that there are inexpensive new additions, like packages of knitting needles in order to use the sheared wool.

@gailcalled – I heard about that program bud didn’t know the url – thanks for that!

@gailcalled I donate to the Heifer Project every year on behalf (a llama?) of my kids. I think it is a great organization.

I heartily agree with @iamthemob about Kiva.org and I’m more than happy to put in an additional plug for one of my favorite organizations. I’ve been lending the same $300 dollars through Kiva for about two years now, though it’s a little less than that now because sometimes I donate a percentage of that initial $300 to the organization so it can continue to support itself.

Sending food directly to someone in another country can be problematic to begin with, for a number of reasons, as people have already mentioned. Additionally, in some of the poorest countries there can be a fair amount corruption and there’s no way to be certain that the package, the food, will actually get to the people you send it to.

There’s also the whole “Give a man a fish he eats for a day; teach a man to fish he eats for a lifetime” thing to think about here. An organization like Kiva allows small business people, entrepeneurs and cooperatives to open new businesses or expand existing ones. It’s amazing how far one or two or three hundred dollars can go in some parts of the world. For example, someone might need to borrow $150 to buy another sewing machine for a seamstress shop. She might be able to double the income of her business and hire another worker who can then better support her family. And, if you wanted to help the woman get her sewing machine you can lend as little as $25 dollars because other Kiva members will lend $25 or more until she’s got the $150. Then when you’re paid back you can lend the $25 dollars to someone else. How much would it cost just in postage to ship a package food overseas?

And you can join lending teams to increase your impact and express an affinity. It’s kind of interesting to look at some of those. I think many people on fluther would be quite pleased to know that the Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious Kiva lending team is whooping the Kiva Christians lending team’s butt. :-) The atheists are beating them soundly with a total loan amount of $2,843,150 to the Christians’ mere $1,725,000. Not Christian bashing; just stating the facts here, just saying that this round goes to the atheists.

For an absolute personal touch, many churches have “sister” congregations they work with.