FLANDREAU — What started as a small local effort to help kids overseas play baseball has evolved into an emergency relief effort to feed people trapped by burgeoning civil war.

In Sudan, millions have fled their homes as the country is on the brink of a civil war. And while a situation more than 7,000 miles away doesn’t always hit home, several local organizations and businesses are doing their best to bridge the gap by sending over 56,000 pounds of food to refugees.

The effort was organized in part by Helping Kids Round First — an organization led by Flandreau native Craig Severtson. Severtson’s mission to help those in need started with a trip to Nicaragua in 2008 after seeing the country’s passion for baseball.

After rounding up baseball equipment in 2009 and sending it to Nicaragua, Helping Kids Round First started producing organized leagues for children to play in including an MLBRBI program to give them “a full major league experience,” but Severtson also realized the country needed more than just a bat and a glove.

“When you make a lot of friends and you get inside the culture, it just wasn’t enough,” Severtson explained. “So you make a choice. We jumped in all walks of life and in the gravel out in the rural areas where the poorest people live.”

In 2016, Helping Kids Round First expanded their operation to contribute to education, agriculture and healthcare. What began as bags of baseball equipment turned into massive shipping containers that sent food, medical equipment and other supplies to Nicaragua.

The organization even established scholarships for women as well as daycares to serve the elderly and homes to shelter the homeless.

“It has been really, really exciting,” Scarlette Gomez, a Nicaraguan psychologist and speech therapist that works as a volunteer for Helping Kids Round First. “The projects we have in Nicaragua…they really fill you with everything that you need. The people are so nice and so grateful for all the help and programs with education, sports and health.”

While Helping Kids Round First’s contributions have made a difference in Nicaragua, the situation is even more dire in Sudan, which has been involved in a conflict since almost 200 civilians were killed in an attack last April. Since then over 3,000 people have died and over 6,000 people have been ounded and 2.9 million people have fled their homes to seek safety in the neighboring country of Chad.

“The refugees that we will be serving are running from a war that the camps are out,” Severtson said. “...They’re probably in a desert under some trees. No shelter. No food. No water. There’s nothing there except they had to run from war and they completely rely on these kinds of donations.”

The donations consist largely of bags of food that are packed into boxes and loaded into a shipping container. Once there, the bags can be boiled and feed a family of six. The local cost of each bag is around 50 cents but it’s estimated the cost ranges somewhere from $2 to $6 in the nation of Sudan.

While Helping Kids Round First has stepped up to help the refugees, they aren’t the only non-government organization that is doing so. Former South Dakota state senator Scott Parsley has also contributed to the cause with the Sioux Falls-based organization Kids Against Hunger, which has been packing food for just over four years.

“Sudan is in such a mess they have with the civil war they have going on right now,” Parsley said. “...We’re just going to be a small part of, hopefully, a long chain that’s bringing food and relief in on a consistent basis.”

Then Feed Just One is an organization out of Le Mars, Iowa, that is also involved in the project and contributed over 40 percent of the food that was being sent to Sudan on Friday morning and has contributed up to 1.2 to 1.5 million meals per year to Honduras, Haiti and Tanzania.

“We’re very pleased that we could piggyback with Kids Against Hunger and Helping Kids Rounding First,” Elkton-based volunteer Francis Seivert said. “It’s a big deal no matter where you send this because there are so many people that are deprived of food and for whatever reason deprived of good, potable water.”

Other local companies such as Dakota Layers, Brookings Medical Center, Warren Seed, First Bank and Trust and Maguire Iron out of Sioux Falls have contributed to the project — not only providing financial backing but helping pack the food in order to send it to Sudan.

“We wouldn’t be able to do this if we didn’t have their support,” Parsley said. It’s not only financial support but they’ve come out and they’ve packaged a lot of this food that we’re sending to go to Sudan, Chad or somewhere in South Africa. We couldn’t do it without them. They’re just vital to the operation.”

After being loaded on Friday, the shipping container will be transported using a freight truck to Norfolk, Va., and placed on a shipping barge which will send the supplies to Sudan in a span of 47 days.

Although it’s a far way from Flandreau, the donations and support will be used to help support those in need and Severtson believes it’s the most important project he’s done over the past 16 years.

“Everything we do is based on the people we meet and the needs you run into,” Severtson said. “...That led to this. Nicaragua was tough. They’re the poorest country in Latin America, but there’s nothing like the dark of Africa during a war. … That’s why this is so important.

"Without this, one can’t live and that’s why we consider this project more important than others in its own way.”