Feed My Starving Children needs your holiday help
Families and church groups have a meaningful way to spend Thanksgiving morning, Christmas Eve, and New Year's Eve this holiday season: pack meals with Feed My Starving Children and cover the costs with a sacrificial gift of $50 per volunteer.
At FMSC meal-packing, adults and children ages 5 and older hand-assemble MannaPack meals consisting of rice, soy nuggets, dehydrated vegetables, and a flavoring with 20 vitamins and minerals. The activity draws families and groups together while feeding the hungry.
The $50 donation required for the holiday packing sessions covers the cost of one box of MannaPack meals, which feeds a child for seven months.
The six special holiday meal-packing sessions, which also include two Sundays, when FMSC is usually not open, are called "Fully Invested" because volunteers are asked to invest both time and funds to feed the world's hungry. Normally, FMSC does not require a donation; but for these sessions each volunteer commits to funding a box of 216 MannaPack meals at $50.
Fully Invested sessions will be offered at the following times at the Aurora, Libertyville, and Schaumburg meal-packing sites of Feed My Starving Children:
• 8:30 to 10 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 27 (Thanksgiving Day)
• 10:30 a.m. to noon Nov. 27
• 1-3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 14
• 1-3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 21
• 9-11 a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 24 (Christmas Eve)
• 7-9 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 31 (New Year's Eve)
Reserve spots at fmsc.org/FullyInvested. There is room for 140 volunteers at the Libertyville site, 140 at the recently expanded Aurora site, and 90 at the Schaumburg site for each of the six shifts.
Since 1987, more than 885,000 Chicago area volunteers have packed 216 million meals.
A Christian nonprofit founded in 1987, Feed My Starving Children tackles world hunger by sending volunteer-packed, nutritious meals to more than 70 countries, where they're used to operate orphanages, schools, clinics and feeding programs to break the cycle of poverty.
Last year, FMSC welcomed nearly 800,000 volunteers to pack more than 191.6 million meals. The Minnesota-based charity spends more than 90 percent of total donations directly on feeding the hungry and has earned the highest four-star rating from Charity Navigator for nine consecutive years.