Join with family and friends to feed hungry kids this holiday season

At special holiday packing sessions held on Thanksgiving, the second and third Sundays before Christmas and the Saturday before Christmas, volunteers hand-assemble nourishing Feed My Starving Children MannaPack meals that are distributed to schools, clinics, orphanages and feeding programs in 70 countries.

The $50 donation per volunteer (or $150 per household) required for the holiday packing sessions covers the cost of one box of 216 MannaPack meals, which feeds a child for seven months.

Normally, Feed My Starving Children does not require a donation, but several times a year it gives volunteers the chance to become fully invested by packing meals and investing financially in them as well.

Those unable to invest financially are invited to attend one of Feed My Starving Children's regular packing sessions.

These special "Fully Invested" sessions will be offered at Feed My Starving Children meal-packing sites in Aurora, Libertyville and Schaumburg on:

• Thursday, Nov. 23 (Thanksgiving): 8:30 to 10 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. to noon

• Sunday, Dec. 10: 1 to 3 p.m.

• Sunday, Dec. 17: 1 to 3 p.m.

• Saturday, Dec. 23: 9 to 11 a.m. and noon to 2 p.m.

Reserve spots at fmsc.org/fully-invested.

There is room for 140 volunteers at the Libertyville site, 140 at the Aurora site and 120 at the Schaumburg site for each of the six shifts.

A Christian nonprofit founded in 1987, Feed My Starving Children tackles world hunger by sending volunteer-packed, nutritious meals to 70 countries, where they're used to operate orphanages, schools, clinics and feeding programs to break the cycle of poverty.

Last year, it welcomed nearly 1.1 million volunteers to pack more than 284 million meals to feed more than 779,000 kids daily for a year. The Minnesota-based charity spends more than 90 percent of total annual donations directly on feeding kids.

For more information, visit fmsc.org.