At Corpus Christi, more than 240 volunteers helped package food for starving children.
Campaign that Strives to Address World Hunger
Vitamins. Soy. Rice. Dehydrated vegetables. Manna Pack (quart-sized sealed bags, about the size of a zip-lock bag).
Forty-eight Palisades residents volunteered from noon to 2 p.m. on June 20 as part of the Feed My Starving Children event. (148 volunteers worked the 9 to 11 shit and 44 worked the 3 to 5 p.m. shift.)
Much like a factory line, each person at Corpus Christi Church had a specific job: measuring rice, opening the bags, weighing them, sealing the bags or packing 36 packets into a box.
At the end of the middle shift, the 48 volunteers were told that they had packed 72 boxes of food and that “We’re happy if there is a box for each volunteer.” Cheers went up from the volunteers.
“This will feed 43 kids a meal a day for a year,” the organizer said, noting that the meals are specifically designed to reverse and prevent malnutrition. “Your impact will go so far.”
He explained that 99.8 percent of the meals shipped annually have safely reached various international locations. He also encouraged people to visit the Market Place, which had been set up at the packing event.
“Once people don’t have to constantly worry about food to stay alive, then they are encouraged to find employment, and many do it through creating hand-crafted items,” said the organizer, who added that the extra money and food allow parents to send their children to school.
Overall, 404 boxes were packed, which will provide 87,264 meals.
This nonprofit Christian organization Feed My Starving Children has a 4-star Charity Navigator designation with 91 percent of total donations spent directly on meal production.
In addition to holding a MobilePack event such as the one at Corpus, there are eight permanent food packing sites in the United States (Arizona-1, Illinois-3, Minnesota-3 and Texas-1) and visitors are always welcome to volunteer.
Food is shipped to 13 countries in the Caribbean, eight countries in Asia, four countries in the Middle East, four countries in South America, 24 countries in Africa, three countries in Europe and seven countries in North and Central America. (Visit: fmsc.org/impact-of-our-work/where-we-serve.)
This was the second food-packing event brought to the community by Palisades Lutheran Pastor Kenneth Davis, who preached his last sermon at that church on Sunday.
“This is a great community, and one of the biggest challenges for people is the giving of time,” said Davis. “This is a real tangible way of doing it.”
He noted that the goal of FMSC is “to eradicate hunger one person at a time.”
Davis had hoped the community would be able to pack 100,000 meals at this event, but “so many meals were still packed and I think this was a successful event,” he said in an email to Circling the News on June 25.
After his wife died in 2009, Davis took his three daughters on missions to different areas of the world, such as Belize, Panama, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Mexico. While in Belize and then again in El Salvador, “we distributed the packages to the village,” Davis said. “We were so impressed with FMSC.”
The following sponsors made donations: Palisades Lutheran, Palisades Presbyterian, Corpus Christi Church, the Palisades Interfaith Council, the Palisades Optimist Club, American Legion Post 283 and La Casa de Cristo Lutheran Church in Scottsdale, Arizona. Visit: fmsc.org.
Heather Wilken, and Pacific Palisades Optimists Dan Ackerman, Don Scott and Bill Skinner each had a specialty while on the food assembly line. Photo: Rick Wilken