Hoffman Estates resident helps pack 100,000 meals for the hungry

Seven months ago, Jordan Habel had never heard of Feed My Starving Children, a nonprofit Christian organization that ships meals to malnourished children in almost 70 countries around the world.

This Sunday, the Hoffman Estates native, along with a leadership team of 12 of his peers, will carry out a MobilePack event for the organization at Miami University of Ohio. The effort will involve more than 500 volunteers packing at least 100,000 simple and highly transportable meals.

“It’s been such a pleasure to be able to bring it (to Miami of Ohio),” said Habel, a freshman studying music education. “I can’t wait to see it grow here.”

Habel first learned about the organization back home from his girlfriend’s mother. She had volunteered at a permanent Feed My Starving Children packing facility in the suburbs before and showed Habel a video about the cause.

“At first, I’m thinking, ‘What am I going to do about it?’ I went a little bit crazy,” he said, adding that the video highlighted how it only costs about 22 cents to feed a starving child for a day.

According to the organization, 93 percent of donations go directly to the meal-packing process. Of the more than 400 million meals that have been packed, 99.97 percent have reached their destination safely, the group says.

While home in December for winter break, Habel went by himself to a Feed My Starving Children permanent packing facility in Aurora to see for the first time what the process was like.

“It was probably the fastest hour and a half I had in my life,” he said, adding that they packed about 33,000 meals that day. “The impact, it just continues to blow my mind.”

Habel estimates he has put more than 1,000 hours into planning Sunday’s event since October and raised more than $15,000. Volunteers will be split into teams of six and focus on packing one of four ingredients — rice, soy, dry vegetables and flavoring — into the meals.

“This whole experience has been such a ride,” he said, adding that he hopes MobilePack will become an annual event at the school.