Food For The Poor (FFTP) recently received one of the highest honors that the Order of Malta can bestow.

The Cross pro Merito Melitensi was presented to FFTP at the Order of Malta’s IX Conference of the Americas in Panama.

FFTP President/CEO Ed Raine, who presented at the conference, accepted the award on behalf of the charity.

“We fully understand the significance of the Cross pro Merito Melitensi and how rarely this is given, especially to an organization,” Raine said.

The IX Conference of the Americas brought together all the presidents of the National Associations and representatives of the Order of Malta’s diplomatic missions in the Americas. Participants engaged in wide-ranging discussions on food scarcity, the challenges of fundraising, and the logistics of delivering aid to those most in need.

Raine said FFTP’s long-standing partnership with the Order of Malta, which dates to at least 2011, is of utmost significance to the charity.

“To have a trusted partner in the many countries we jointly serve is essential to our Christian stewardship,” Raine said.

“We’ve had so many introductions from these Knights of the Order from one country to another,” he said. “Once we have received those introductions, we get tremendous value added in terms of their counsel and advice on how best to achieve our shared goals of serving the poor and the sick in their respective countries.”

The story leading to FFTP being recognized with the award and traveling to the conference in Panama began a little over a year ago when Lupo del Bono, Ambassador of the Order of Malta in Panama, visited FFTP’s headquarters in Coconut Creek, Fla., and met Raine.

“He quickly figured out how widespread and significant our work was,” Raine recalled. “And he said, ‘Nobody knows about you. We can change that.”

Since 2011, FFTP has shipped more than 4,000 containers of aid to The Order of Malta, which has overseen the distribution to families in need in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Panama, Paraguay, and Mexico.

The value of those containers, which have contained mostly medical supplies, totals about $1.9 billion.

The Sovereign Order of Malta, also known as the Knights of Malta, is a Catholic religious order founded more than 900 years ago, with a long history of service to the vulnerable and the sick. Today, it is active in 120 countries, caring for people in need through its medical, social, and humanitarian works.

“We’ve had a lot of opportunities to leverage and get into countries, thanks to the Order of Malta,” Raine said. “We are blessed to do God’s work together, which fits our tagline so perfectly – United in God’s Work.”

Food For The Poor, one of the largest international relief and development organizations in the nation, does much more than feed millions of hungry children and families living in poverty primarily in 17 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. This interdenominational Christian ministry provides emergency relief assistance, water, medicine, educational materials, homes, support for vulnerable children, care for the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance.