Thursday, October 15th was a moving day for 20 Buffalo High School students and staff, who volunteered their time to make meals for children across the world that suffer from malnutrition and starvation. Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) is a Nonprofit Christian Hunger Relief Organization founded in 1987 with four different locations across the midwest; Coon Rapids, Eagan, Chanhassen, MN and Aurora, IL.
FMSC distributes food to over 60 countries world wide; like Haiti, who has an 80 percent poverty rate, and Uganda, who has an annual income of only 340 dollars, where in the U.S. it’s over 46 thousand. Each meal is measured carefully to 400 grams and consists of rice, soy for protein, vegetarian chicken flavoring with over 20 vitamins and minerals, and dehydrated vegetables for flavor. All of the meals are packed by volunteers, and over 50 percent of them are children under 18.
If a child is fortunate enough, they’ll receive one meal a day, which is served at school for lunch. That also is a motive for children to come to school, if they don’t come, they probably won’t have a meal that day. Each meal costs 17 cents, meaning that ten dollars will give a child enough food for two months. In our society, ten dollars is an average of what is spent on one meal.
In the hour and a half that students and staff were working, 15,984 meals were packed, which will feed 44 children one meal a day for an entire year. But 18,000 children die daily because of starvation. It is a proven fact that there is enough food in the world to feed everyone, it’s distribution that is the problem. So students from BHS plan to volunteer monthly. You don’t need to be involved in GMSA, anyone is welcome, just talk to Math teacher Emily Greeley for more information.
“I think it is amazing knowing that you are helping children from across the world, that you will never meet, but you are giving them a chance to live.” Said Junior Sarah Oliver, “I also think it’s great that because it is a Christian organization, anyone who packs food may join the group and pray over it before it is shipped. It is not pushed to make anyone uncomfortable, just an opportunity to pray that the food is blessed and not only will it fill the childrens stomaches, but their hearts knowing someone cares and loves them.”
In 2008, FMSC had over 310,000 volunteers and packaged over 73.6 million meals that were shipped across the world. That is over 200 thousand children that had one meal a day for an entire year, but still, so much help is needed. So lets remember this and not take advantage of what we have here in America, we can be part of the change to stop world hunger.
