Million meal event rewarding experience

Rick McNary started his Kansas-based international care organization named Numana eight years ago after meeting a 5-year-old Nicaraguan girl who was starving to death. Since then he has worked to send food, medicine and doctors to the places most in need of help. His organization's mission: Saving the Starving.

It was a few days after Christmas, and Numana had done its first assembly line production of packaged, ready-to-cook meals with the intent to send them to Haiti, where malnutrition and unemployment are through the roof and those lucky enough to have jobs make, on average, just $200 a year. It had 250,000 meals ready to ship.

And then the devastating earthquake hit Port-au-Prince.

When asked to explain that confluence of events, McNary smiles and looks skyward.

In the last six weeks, some 45,000 volunteers have assembled and packed up 4.5 million meals. This, too, reinforces his faith.

At least 3,300 of those volunteers showed up between Saturday and Sunday to work in two-hour shifts at the former Seigle's home center in Elgin. The goal was to pack 1 million meals.

It was a joint operation of Numana and the Elgin Salvation Army. Many were from Elgin, a city that oozes volunteerism. But Pat Jones from St. Charles wanted to help. Steven Johnson from Schaumburg was there, too. This was a real suburban effort.

Just before 10 a.m., a man got on the PA system and announced that the hundreds of people who had been assembling meals had packed up 10,000 meals. By 10:37, the count was 50,000. By 1:15, 100,000. And by 12:15, 180,000 meals had been mixed, bagged and boxed.

With every announcement, the collective cheer grew louder.

The Silva family of Elgin has done its share of volunteering. "But this is the first time we've done it as a family," says Nancy. She, husband Steve, daughters Mariana and Elena and friends Maxine Scotty and Gabriella Sotomayor worked feverishly with others as a team at Table 21 - one of dozens of work stations - at the former Seigle's home center on Elgin's west side. The girls, who attend Fox River Country Day School and St. Edward Catholic High School in Elgin, are required to do volunteer work as part of their studies.

The family members along with others they'd never met measured, mixed and bagged the dry rice, chicken-flavored soy powder and vitamin-enriched freeze dried vegetables, labeled them with Creole instructions and packed them in boxes. In less than two hours, Table 21 had packed enough to feed 2,800 people.

By the end of this week, McNary told the group, those meals will be in Port-au-Prince.

The warm feelings and camaraderie that erupted from this massive effort in Elgin is something one can only truly appreciate from having done it.

Try it yourself. Get hooked. There are plenty of people who could use your help both home and abroad.

Give 'til it feels good.