Volunteering to End Hunger

Last weekend I had the opportunity to volunteer for a truly worthwhile project: helping to feed children in Haiti. Organized by Feed My Starving Children, a Christian organization which distributes food to children of all religions, there was 24 hour food packing at the Southdale Mall in Edina, MN. My husband and I, along with members of the church that employs him, Edina Community Lutheran Church , pitched in for a three hour shift. Tables were set up and food was packed through the assembly line technique. Plastic bags were placed over a funnel and filled with chicken (vegetarian chicken bouillon, we were told), dehydrated veggies, soy and rice, then the bags were sealed, boxed and placed on pallets. I was the soy and rice scooping girl. They played upbeat music, the time passed quickly and I felt great after.

Here is the after-the-fact information from Feed My Starving Children  :

Thank you to all who volunteered at the One Community event! Thanks to your support, the final numbers are truly astonishing:

5,166 volunteers

1,710,288 meals

On May 21 and 22, the South Metro community gathered in an unprecedented effort to pack meals for Haiti. The One Community event was truly for everyone - students, families, clubs, teams, churches, businesses, and more - all working together to hand-pack specially formulated meals for starving children in Haiti.

We took over the former Mervyn's store at Southdale Mall for 24 hours starting May 21 at 6:00 p.m. It was a 24-hour blitz to fill Southdale not with "mall rats" but with "pack rats." It was one community uniting for one day with one purpose: Feed Haiti.

FMSC provides nourishing food to:

Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belize, Chile, Colombia, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador,  Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Jamaica, Kenya,  Liberia, Malawi, Mexico, Namibia, Nicaragua, Peru, Philippines, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.

If you have a group of ten or more friends and you live in or are visiting Minnesota, you can volunteer for a shift to pack food. See Group Volunteer Information .

If you're like me, and probably generally can't whip up ten willing friends who are all free at the same time, you can still help by donating. See Donate or Gift of Life and Hope Catalog.

Thanks for reading.