Woman seeks volunteers for massive food mission
Cathy Anderson first learned about Feed My Starving Children through a newspaper photo.
"The picture showed people packing food to send to children who were starving," she said. "I thought, 'I could do that.'"
The Batavia woman signed up for a time and joined others in the area to pack food. Now she is recruiting her neighbors and friends to join her.
"The packing of food was really not hard at all and everyone made it so welcoming," she said. "There were people there of all ages, from about 4 years old to the elderly."
After watching a short video on the plight of the undernourished around the world, the volunteers for Feed My Starving Children pack the food in assembly line fashion, seeing the process from beginning to end. When the boxes are complete, they are placed on pallets ready for shipment.
"At that point you can put your hand on the boxes and say a prayer for its safe arrival to where it is going, if you choose to," she added.
A Minneapolis-based Christian organization, Feed My Starving Children puts together scientifically formulated meals that provide all of the nutrients that a child will need for a day. The meals cost 15 cents and 95 percent of all the money the group raises goes to the feeding program.
From Sept. 22 through Sept. 27, volunteers will take part in the One Million Meals for Egypt campaign at St. Thomas the Apostle Church at 1500 Brookdale in Naperville. The 1 million meals will be shipped to Cairo to feed children in refugee camps, a school for the mentally disabled, a children's hospital, the elderly and incarcerated youth. According to the United Nations, there are 2.4 million undernourished people in Egypt.
To pack one million meals in five days requires a large number of people. Shifts are only two hours in length and Cathy Anderson is hoping that other groups will join her in helping with this effort.
"It's a great opportunity for sports groups, Scout troops or church youth groups," she said. "The staff is great. They help you and encourage you. When you leave there you feel like you really have accomplished something and helped someone."
Feed My Starving Children has shipped the meals to 45 countries around the world. In 2006 alone, the organization shipped 30 million meals packed by more than 137,000 volunteers. The volunteers come from all denominations and faiths.
To sign up your group, contact the folks at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Naperville at (630) 355-8980. If you don't have the time to donate and you want to help pay for some meals, you can learn about the ways to do that by logging on to the Web site for Feed My Starving Children at www.fmsc.org.
If you will be gone the week of Sept. 22 and are still interested in volunteering, you will have more opportunities to help in the future. Feed My Starving Children will be opening a Chicago area facility in the near future that will be based in Aurora.
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