Jamesly Jesse organized a meal packing event for Haiti

Adopted from Haiti after being injured in an earthquake 13 years ago, the Central A&M student wanted to give back to the country that introduced him to people who could help him and find his forever home.

“The community of Milot really took care of him,” his mother Mary Jesse said about the Haitian city. “They truly did save his life.”

To give back to the Caribbean country, Jamesly partnered with Holy Name, the agency that owns and operates Hôpital Sacré Coeur in Haiti, to provide meals for the hospital and community that helped save his life.

On Sunday, Jamesly hosted a meal-packing event in his high school gymnasium. With nearly 400 volunteers, the goal was to prepare 100,000 meals in five hours. He was able to raise $35,000 to fund the meal packing event. “It was Facebook,” he said about advertising the project.

Jamesly prepared a video in March that attracted others outside of his family and circle of friends.

“He probably doesn’t know a lot of them,” said his father, Nathan Jesse.

The event is also part of his Eagle Scout project. “This is close to me, not only because it’s for the place that I’m from, but just to feed another community, is a big thing to me,” he said. “You don’t know everybody that you’re helping, but you know people are surviving from those meals.”

The meals consist of protein powder, rice, beans and spices. They will be given to children, nursing and pregnant mothers and the elderly.

“The meals are a lot of protein,” Jamesly said. “It’s mainly to help them have a lot of nutrients, because if they don’t have enough energy they can’t do a lot of things and they can get sick.”

Jamesly admits the meals taste bland. “I’ve had one,” he said. “It’s more for the nutrients.”

“But they will season them,” Mary Jesse said about the recipients of the meals.

Mary Jesse has traveled to Haiti on numerous missionary visits. During one of those trips, she met Jamesly, a toddler who had been severely injured in the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in 2010.

“When rescuers discovered him, he weighed only 13 pounds and suffered a chronic spine condition that had gone untreated,” said Ana Sandoval, director of external communications for Holy Name Medical Center. “Doctors gave little hope for his survival when he arrived at Hôpital Sacré Coeur, the largest private medical center in northeastern Haiti and also a primary distribution point for food for the region.”

After several struggles to get Jamesly home, he finally arrived in the United States in 2013.

Jeff Rhode, multimedia specialist with Holy Name, has visited Haiti and other meal packing events designed to help the hospital. “Our hospital, Holy Name, is part of a larger system of ministries,” he said. “If it wasn’t for the hospital in Milot existing, it’s the only economic engine in the entire area.”