Local charity offering Sunday volunteer hours

To accommodate increasing requests from volunteer groups, the Christian hunger relief organization Feed My Starving Children is offering some Sunday meal-packing sessions at the Schaumburg facility.

The sessions will be held 1-3 p.m. on Sept. 16, Oct. 21, Nov. 18 and Dec. 18 at 1072 National Parkway, Schaumburg, and are offered to groups willing to donate a required $50 per person.

Feed My Starving Children produces nutritious meals designed to restore malnourished children to full health. Volunteers hand-pack the meals, and they’re shipped to missions and humanitarian agencies working in 70 countries around the world.

“Many Chicago-area groups have expressed a desire to pack on a Sunday afternoon as a ministry to the poor or an extension of their worship service,” says CEO/Executive Director Mark Crea. He said the Sunday sessions will accommodate up to 400 people to pack on a semiprivate basis with their church or family group.

For the Sunday sessions, each group must pay $50 per volunteer, which pays for a box of 216 nutritious meals that will feed malnourished children. Each meal costs 22 cents to produce and 93 percent of all donations directly support the food program. All meals are packed by volunteers, who, along with donors, pay for 100 percent of FMSC meals. FMSC receives no government aid.

Volunteer groups can sign up for the Sunday packing sessions at fmsc.org/fullyinvested. All other weekday and Saturday shifts at the Schaumburg facility will continue to be offered on a no-obligation basis; however, FMSC urges all volunteers to help fund the meals they pack with a voluntary donation.

If successful, the pilot program may be offered at other FMSC packing locations, including Aurora and the under-construction site in Libertyville.

Since 2008, Chicago area volunteers at packing sites in Schaumburg and Aurora have packed more than 80 million meals that were distributed to hungry families in Haiti, Kenya, Nicaragua, Swaziland and other developing nations.

The new 18,000 square-foot Libertyville, Ill. facility is scheduled to open in November and will enable more than 100,000 area volunteers to pack more than 30 million meals annually for malnourished children around the world. To donate and join the Chicago campaign visit www.fmsc.org/changetheworldchicago.