Feed My Starving Children

Feed My Starving Children is a Christian ministry that started up in 1987. It organizes volunteers to hand-pack manna packets to send to hungry children all over the world. There are many packing centers around the United States. FMSC receives highest awards for integrity and trustworthiness, “earning a 4-star rating from Charity Navigator for 19 years.”

Kudos to Jeanie who has been organizing a monthly session “Jeanie’s Friends” for the past ten years. I join her and her friends when I can.

The food packet ingredients consist of: powdered vitamins, dried vegetables, soy and rice. Hand-filling the packerts is an efficient process with everyone contributing in different ways…like a human chain. Someone holds the bag open under a funnel, two people add the ingredients, then someone weights the food packet, and passes it to another who seals the packet, and then to the next person who puts the manna packets into a larger box for shipping. One box holds 36 manna packets. One manna packet supplies six meals. There are five 2-hour packing sessions each day.

On Tuesday, when I was up there to help this week, there were 100 volunteers from all over the south metro, and we packed 132 boxes…which means 28,512 meals…which will feed 79 kids a daily meal for one year.

On this day we were packing meals for Burkina Faso, a country in Africa.

It helps me to be doing something positive in these uncertain times, when it seems food uncertainty keeps growing. Today, our short work session impacts 79 more children than yesterday.

Here is a link to Feed My Starving Children if you want to find out more, or to volunteer.

I have posted about Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) a couple of times. Here are links to previous posts: https://valeriesvoice.net/fmsc/ and https://valeriesvoice.net/feed-my-starving-children/

FMSC

Occasionally I go up to the cities to help feed children…by helping make food packets.

Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) is a Christian organization that has been packing meals for hungry children all over the world, for many years…since 1987.

There is a small group from my church that helps at the Eagan facility about once a month, and I join them when it works. When you arrive, you gather with fellow volunteers from all over the area to listen to instructions. Next, after washing your hands, you don a hairnet and gloves and enter the packing facility. It is set up with different stations in an assembly line format, and you go to your assigned station.

The packing facility with several stations.

One station can accommodate up to seven people. It’s a well-run operation. Once people are in place, they turn on the music and we sometimes dance and sway to the music, as we work.

There are four ingredients to the meal; vitamin powder, dried vegetables, soy, and rice. Two people scoop up the ingredients into a funnel that dumps into the plastic bag. The bag is weighed and then sealed and put into a box. In one hour, five of us working together at one station, can fill 9-10 boxes, of 36 packets each.

At this one (of five per day) session, the volunteers packed 60 boxes.

It’s a wonderful, hands-on way of making a difference for children. The meals we packed at our last session were going to Nicaragua.

It is a great volunteer activity for all ages…starting at age 5. And, if you can’t stand for a long period of time, you can sit and apply labels to the plastic bags before they are filled.

If interested to learn more or volunteer, check it out here: FMSC.

Feed My Starving Children

I helped make a meal for 37,000 children yesterday.

I volunteered at Feed My Starving Children, a non-profit Christian organization that packages nutritious meals to be sent to hungry children around the world. Over 37,000 meals were assembled in our two hour shift.

Four of us from my church drove up to Eagan to the FMSC facility to help pack food packages. We were among one hundred volunteers working during our time slot. The system is a streamlined assembly-line process that allows for a team of six to eight people working together at one of several stations to get a lot of meals packed in a short amount of time.

The packaged meal consists of rice, soy, freeze-dried vegetables and vitamins. By adding water to the contents, a nutritional meal is ready to eat. They say that 99% of their meal packets make it successfully to their destinations. They believe prayer plays a big part in that success since they pray over every box that is shipped out of the warehouses.

FMSC: work stations filled with volunteers.

I like to support this organization both financially and by volunteering at one of the three packing centers here in the metro area. If we are looking for a unique gift, or are at a lost for a gift idea, donating money to this cause in someone’s honor, is a great solution.

It’s a successful program and the need is great. I feel time spent helping this organization is worth it. I believe they are making a difference in the lives of thousands, if not millions, of children around the world and I hope to volunteer more often now that I’m retired.