"Feed My Starving Children"

Like I said last week, I got to participate in a super cool service activity. 

Feed My Starving Children is an interfaith project to provide food for starving children all over the world.  I'll tell you about my experience, which was awesome and now I am really excited about it.

 

My team

 There were three days of packing, each with five or six sessions of two hour packing times.  In my session, there were LDS, First Baptists, Ithaca College students, and a handful of others. 

We had a few minutes of background on the program and its mission.  It was started 25 years ago by a gentleman who saw a need in Honduras, and started asking for donations of crackers and granola bars, and sending them down.  Eventually, they asked him to stop sending this food.  Because it was so processed, and the children were so emaciated, it was actually making them sicker.  So he got with some food scientists and created the "Manna Rice" which I'll describe in a minute. 

The reason it was started is summed up in the phrase, "a hungry belly has no ears."  If a person doesn't know where their next meal is coming from (or if there will be one), how can they grow spiritually?  This program helps kids have food security so they can fulfill their dreams.

We went downstairs to the packing area in our beautiful hairnets, and got some training on what we would actually be doing.   We were stationed at six tables, where there were several positions to choose from. At the head of the table were the bins of food: vitamin powder, dried vegetables, soy, and rice.  The food scoopers would pour them into the funnel where a person would hold the pouch.  That person would weigh it and make sure it was within the target range.

Then they would pass to the sealers, who would pinch out excess air and heat seal it shut.  This was my job for a majority of the time, and my arm was seriously sore for like two days.

Lastly, we would pass the pouches to the boxer, who would count, then pack the pouches into the shipping boxes.  Our table did suuuper great, packing 21 boxes (each had 36 pouches).  We (our whole session) packed enough food to feed 64 children for a whole year.   I'll admit that I got the warm fuzzies when I heard that.

My other job was weigher.  I liked it quite a bit

One of my favorite parts of the experience was seeing the true charity emanate from the national staff that came to help.  These young men and women do this work because they love the children they are serving.

the heat sealer, my friend and ally

The LDS ward and branch are getting more involved, and we might even be hosting next year.  There will be fund raisers throughout the year, and now that I'm invested in this emotionally, I can't wait to help!