Volunteer – Valerie's Voice

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.

Operation Christmas Child

Our church is an official drop off location for Operation Christmas Child (OCC). OCC is a ministry of Samaritan’s Purse and it provides Christmas gifts to children around the world. It’s simple. You take an empty shoebox and fill it with special hygiene products, school supplies, toys, and a special “wow” gift. Once filled, you bring it to a drop off location, where it in turn goes to the processing center, before shipped to a designated area around the world in need of Christmas Joy.

It is fun to pack a shoebox. Our church held a packing event this year. We set up long tables with different items that had been donated throughout the year especially for the shoebox ministry, i.e., soap, washcloths, pencils, note pads, color crayons, special “wow” gifts, etc…At our church’s November community meal people had the opportunity to pack a box right in church, without going to the store. Folks of all ages enjoyed this event.

A photo for the front page of OCC’s website.

There is a $9 suggested donation requested to ship each shoebox. For our packing event, someone anonymously donated the money to cover costs for shipping the 100 shoeboxes we packed that night.

The woman who spearheads this operation, for our section of southeastern Minnesota, goes to our church. She had the opportunity to go to Cameroon last year, to witness the distribution of some shoeboxes. She told us it was remarkable to watch the children receive a box. Their reactions were priceless. The kids were filled with joy. She gave us a first hand account of what happens at the receiving end, the side we do not see when we donate our time and money, to this ministry.

In addition to the gifts, the children have an opportunity to hear the gospel and attend kid-friendly events, with follow-up programs too.

I’m grateful to have to opportunity to volunteer for this global ministry right here in our small corner of the world.

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.