Suburban execs, employees volunteer to help hungry children

More than 100 executives and employees from corporations around the Northwest suburbs took a break from work on Friday to pack meals for hungry children a world away.

Priester Aviation teamed up with Feed My Starving Children to host a two-day mobile packing event in Wheeling to help put together more than 40,000 meals for children in other countries.

Feed My Starving Children is a Christian nonprofit that provides prepackaged dry meals to children in nearly 70 counties. The organization has six permanent packing stations around the country, with two of them in the suburbs. The nonprofit has permanent sites in Aurora and Schaumburg, and another will soon open in Libertyville.

“It helps raise morale of the employees when they come together to do something as a team and to help others,” said Chris Thompson, national development director for Feed My Starving Children.

Joseph Angelo Mangi, director of business development for Priester, said the event was a perfect fit for the aviation industry.

“When you fly so much, you see a lot of places and you see how spoiled you are in the United States,” said Mangi, who is also on the Chicago board for Feed My Starving Children. “You go places like Africa and Central America and you see the poverty; the children on the streets who haven’t eaten in days. It tugs your heartstrings and makes you want to do something about it.”

Armando Olivares, who works at Cisco Systems, said he volunteers with Feed My Starving Children because his father passed the importance of philanthropy on to him.

“I want to save at least one of those 18,000 kids from starving today,” Olivares said, referring to a statistic from Feed My Starving Children and the United Nationals Food and Agriculture Organization that 18,000 children die each day from malnutrition and hunger-related diseases.

Originally Thompson organized the suburban mobile packing event in Wheeling as a way to celebrate his daughter’s 16th birthday.

“I’m trying to show her that there are a lot of things you can do for a sweet 16 that involve spending a lot of money, but how about doing something for kids who might not live until tomorrow,” Thompson said. “Kids who grow up on the North Shore aren’t worried about where their next meal is coming from.”

Thompson lived in Deerfield until recently relocating to Minnesota for work.

Charlotte Thompson said she likes that her birthday party is more unique and beneficial than those of her friends.

“I’d rather make a difference and save people’s lives than just have a party with a few friends,” Charlotte said.

The public is invited to help celebrate Charlotte’s birthday and volunteer for part two of the Feed My Starving Children mobile packing event from 9-11 a.m. or noon-2 p.m. today at Priester Aviation, 1061 S. Wolf Road, Wheeling.