Denver Catholic

Lecture Series » 6 How to raise 'kingdom builders' 40 churches in Africa burned » 3 Niger Christians in shock VOLUME XCI - NO. 3 | 114 YEARS OF SERVICE TO THE GOSPEL | JANUARY 31-FEBRUARY 6, 2015 www.DenverCatholic.org | @DenverCatholic | www.facebook.com/DenverCatholic | DenverCatholic@archden.org Missionaries of Charity » 4 25 years in Denver W hen Chandra Starr, 14, launched a campaign to raise $10,000 for those in need, she not only wanted to feed them, she wanted to provide them with something that's considered a luxury item for many fami- lies: fresh, organic produce. Last February, Starr, an eighth-grader at St. Stephen School in Glenwood Springs, launched a Million Penny Proj- ect to support the El Jebel-based Growing Food Forward Foundation, a nonprofi t that builds gardens to provide produce to needy families on the Western Slope. By the end of the project in April, she'd collected nearly twice her goal: 1,904,056 pennies ($19,040.56). "I was trying to get my Silver Award for Girl Scouts and we had to do some- thing for the community; I wanted to do something close to my heart," Starr told the Denver Catholic from her Glenwood Springs home. This particular cause was close to her heart because she had experienced what it was like go to without produce when she and her mother, Kimberly Starr Walker, were homeless when she was 5 years old. "We lived in a tent for a month when it was still cold and snowy," Starr said. They had become homeless when Walker, a stay-at-home mother, was in a relationship that turned abusive. "We packed a bag and left at midnight," Walker explained, then they set up their makeshift home in a camp site outside town. Not having a job meant not having money, so she "got food stamps imme- diately," she said. That provided $165 a month which didn't leave room for fresh produce, so to stretch it, she bought less expensive canned and boxed processed foods—foods loaded with sugar, fat and sodium. "We had to make it work," Walker said. She began to worry about her daughter's health as she gained weight, experienced headaches and stomachaches, and was falling asleep in class. Doctors diag- nosed her with early-stage diabetes. This spurred her mother to become educated on more healthy eating habits, and dras- tically changed their diets. Once their housing was secured, both mother and daughter learned how to garden and improved their diet by incor- porating fresh organic produce. Starr is now diabetes-free and A harvest from the heart BY JULIE FILBY 303-715-3123 julie.fi lby@archden.org www.twitter.com/DenCathJulie Teen raises thousands for gardens that feed the hungry » 5 View a photo gallery of the Missionaries of Charity sisters at www.DenverCatholic.org ONLINE 1,904,056 pennies were collected by Chandra Starr that funded 92 gardens that generated 2,000 pounds of produce for families in need. Photo provided Photo by Andrew Wright/Denver Catholic The Catholic Di erence » 10 'Sixty Minutes' leaves viewers with cartoon pope

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