Feed My Starving Children seeks volunteers for summer

Feed My Starving Children is seeking volunteers on a steady basis throughout the summer to meet promised meal shipments to 70 countries around the world.

FMSC’s Chicago-area packing sites in Aurora, Schaumburg and Libertyville are seeking volunteers ages 5 and older to work on assembly lines filling bags with nutritious, dry meals called “MannaPacks,” designed for malnourished children.

Volunteers can check on packing site hours for each location and register 48 hours in advance for a two-hour packing shift at fmsc.org/volunteer. Packing is a fun activity for families or groups, who learn about hunger, then work together in an energetic atmosphere to produce meals.

“We make an annual meal commitment to the developing communities we serve, so we need to keep the boxes filling up and going out on schedule,” said Mark Crea, CEO/executive director of FMSC.

“We’re asking families, churches, civic groups, sports teams, and businesses to give just two hours this summer. Please join us to turn hunger into hope with your own two hands.”

Feed My Starving Children donates the food to missions and humanitarian organizations in developing communities. Those organizations plan on having a steady food supply to operate orphanages, schools, clinics, and feeding programs serving the desperately poor. Leading economists say nutrition is the beginning of all other economic progress.

May through September are typically months when FMSC has a shortage of volunteers. However, packing is a great summer activity for families with children out of school, as well as for sports teams, summer day care centers, and business or civic groups.

“In one shift, a typical volunteer packs 216 meals for undernourished kids,” says Crea. “It leaves you with a huge sense of accomplishment that you’re changing the future for children who have no other hope.”

A Christian nonprofit founded in 1987, Feed My Starving Children tackles world hunger by sending volunteer-packed, nutritious meals to nearly 70 countries, where they’re used to operate orphanages, schools, clinics and other building blocks of healthy communities.

Last year, FMSC produced 163 million meals, maintained its eighth consecutive four-star rating from Charity Navigator and spent more than 92 percent of total donations directly on feeding the hungry.