3.5 million meals for children

Volunteers met at Westgate Elementary School in Arlington Heights on Sunday to pack and mix meals for Zimbabwe school children, as part of Willow Creek Community Church's eight-week meal-packing campaign through the Feed My Starving Children charity.

It's estimated more than 854 million people in the world go hungry.

But few people know how to help.

Over the next few weeks, Willow Creek Community Church hopes to help change that.

The South Barrington church and its member churches are part of an eight-week effort to pack and send 3.5 million meals to starving school children in Zimbabwe through the Christian charity Feed My Starving Children.

The charity works with many other churches as well. St. Mark Lutheran Church in Mount Prospect just completed a weeklong effort in which 1,900 volunteers made more than 400,000 meals.

Willow Creek's campaign is the first of this magnitude in the area. Church officials estimate 15,000 volunteers will participate.

"We really wanted to get their friends and neighbors involved," said Heather Larson, of Willow Creek. "A lot of people who don't attend church really have the desire to have an impact globally."

That's enough meals to feed 10,000 children for about a year. The campaign started on April 4 and goes through May 18, convening at 24 locations across the suburbs at schools, churches and other facilities.

Volunteers will gather to mix and pack meals that cost about 17 cents each, relying on church donations and Feed My Starving Children to pay for the food's almost $600,000 cost. The meals consist of rice, dehydrated vegetables and soy nuggets. They also include vitamins and minerals designed to give malnourished children a nutritional base in one meal a day.

"It's so they can thrive, not just survive," Bea Pedersen said.

Pedersen is Feed My Starving Children's Chicago director of development. The Minnesota-based group recently opened a meal-packing facility in Aurora that works six days a week, attracting 1,100 volunteers and shipping meals to 58 countries.

In September they organized a mobile meal-packing campaign through St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Naperville, sending more than 1 million meals to starving children in Sudan.

Pedersen said she wants to attract more volunteers to help regularly in Aurora, not just from Willow Creek. She added that she hoped mobile events like St. Thomas' and Willow Creek's open eyes.

Willow Creek's Larson said they're booked when it comes to volunteers, but some spots may open later.

Eric Anderson of Algonquin volunteered last week in Lake in the Hills with his family. He talked about seeing images of a starving 9-year-old boy who only weighed 18 pounds. Six months later, after receiving the meals, the boy grew to 46 pounds and looked much healthier. It was an incredible experience for his wife and two daughters.

"From my kids' perspective, we just tried to make them understand the huge majority of the world's population just doesn't have access to basic needs, much less iPods, cell phones and Hannah Montana," Anderson said.

The drive is part of Willow Creek's annual Celebration of Hope campaign. It includes a world market where proceeds will benefit places like Peralta in the Dominican Republic, whose citizens want to build a medical facility.

Willow Creek also is challenging its members to limit their consumption habits. For instance, Anderson and his family have eaten beans and rice for lunch and dinner this week.

"When you do feel a little hungry, it provides a reminder of how the poor live day in and day out," he said.

To volunteer

Contact Bea Pedersen at (847) 497-3278 or fmsc.org, or visit the Web: willowcreek.org/COH08/dates.asp.