Feed My Starving Children was founded in 1987 by a local Minnesotan who had the urge to feed God’s children. The full story is on FMSC’s history page. Through trial and error they found an effective and cheap way to do so. After my research I think I will go there soon. I just saw a sign in my school yesterday to sign up and go volunteer. What a perfect opportunity!
About the organization:
Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) is a Christian organization. They strive to feed the world’s starving children in countries that have or are experiencing disasters such as war, natural disaster and economic failure. Not only do the feed the children nutritional meals, they feed their spiritual self as well. Barb, a volunteer at FMSC, says the spirituality of the organization gives the children hope (Shimshock). The organization works to sustain the children’s food source as well not just feed the child one meal.
Volunteers at the 6 sites plus their mobile site, pack the food to be shipped. Last year, over 500,000 volunteers packed over 124 million meals to needy countries (Shimshock). Volunteers also donate their money to help to food program and 94% of their donation goes straight to it. Under a simple section called Our Mission on their website it states: “Feeding God’s Starving Children Hungry in Body and Spirit.”
This is the orientation video for Feed My Starving Children volunteers.
They have a photo gallery on Flickr. I picked out a two of the pictures from the gallery that immediately stood out to me.
This picture makes me see how big an impact this simple food has on these children. The boy with the empty bowl in line make my heart feel sad for him. Another thing I liked about this photo was that the pot on of food is as big as the little boy. Imagine how many kids are going to eat from it! Amazing!
This little girl in her pretty dress was just so adorable. She grins as she eats perhaps her only meal of the day. It makes me grin as well when I see such a precious child being helped. Who knows how much better her future will be because of the food she received.
FMSC is helping solve a global problem. In America people find it is hard to believe that about 1 out 7 people in our world lack food and clean water. “146 million children under age 5 are underweight and 10.1 million children under age 5 die every year, over half of hunger-related causes” (Hunger Facts). Every 6 seconds a child dies of hunger.
This photo just shouts help.Your can see the life draining from her eyes from lack of food and malnutrition. Her bones are visible through her beaten up skin. This was one of the more bearable images. Some of the others freaked me out.The statistics and images are breathtaking but it is good to know that Feed My Starving Children is doing something about it. The meals they provide prevent the very preventable diseases that cause the deaths of these children. These include diarrhea, acute respiratory infections, or malaria all associated with extreme malnutrition (Hunger facts). FMSC website and videos also back up these stats. The Food was formulated “by scientists at both Cargill and General Mills” and provides enough nutrition for a child in case it is their only meal for the day (Shimshock). There are three different meals that are produced. They are Manna Pack, Manna Pack Potato-W, Manna Pack Potato-D. They are very easy to prepare and even better, they are cheap to produce. One bag has 6 meals and it costs about $1.44 to produce.
I emailed FMSC for my interview. Barb Shimshock, Development Advisor, replied to my questions. She has been a volunteer for a few years and said she loves it! She answered some statistical and factual questions of which I quoted a few above. From the interview I also got a personal feel for the volunteering that goes on at the organization. Anyone from any religious group is allowed to volunteer at the organization. The age requirement is 5 years or older but a chaperon to kid ratio is established for each age group to make sure things are safe and run smoothly for the volunteers. She said that when she and others volunteer they get a sense of satisfaction in knowing they are doing something good. They also enjoy themselves greatly. “It’s amazing to see the children in our communities (in MN) reach out and donate their money to help other less fortunate children.(Shimshock)” One interesting thing I found out about the organization was that they don’t serve children in America. She replied, “We do not. Generally we don't see the severe malnutrition that exists in developing countries. Also, there are other resources available such as the food shelf, etc. These don't exist in developing countries.” This makes sense. I still think that if this much food is being sent out, it would be nice to see at least a little go to needy kids in our country. Or maybe at least organizations in America should adopt similar methods of feeding the poor.
The food is distributed to almost 70 countries in the world. These include:
Afghanistan, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Georgia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Jamaica, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mexico, Mozambique, Myanmar, Gambia, Niger, North Korea, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Ukraine, Zambia, and Zimbabwe
This is a map of the countries they serve that is on the website. As you can see the only dark green on the map is Haiti (very small). For this reason I am going to focus on this small country that has received so much aid from this organization.
I read a folktale from Haiti called, “Why Dogs and Cats Never Get Along”:The characters in the story are Mr. Cat and Mr. Dog. They each have an idea about weather god should allow dead people to come back alive or not. Each one races to God to tell them their idea. Mr. Cat is clever and sets a few bones along the path to distract Mr. Dog. Mr. Dog tries to distract Mr. Cat with a bowl of milk along the path as well. Mr. Cat didn’t fall for it and Mr. Dog did. Mr. Cat got to God first and said, “God I don’t want you to bring dead people back to life,” and good complied. When Mr. Dog got to God he was furious that Mr. Cat had got there first. He never forgave Mr. Cat and this is why Cats and Dogs never get along.
This is a video of kids in Haiti singing and dancing. Chances are they were aided by some organization like FMSC. It is uplifting to see them with uplifted spirits and smiles.
Works Cited
* All information not cited on in the paragraphs came from Feed My Starving Children's Web page.
Feed My Starving Children. Feed My Starving Children | Volunteer Work Opportunities. 2011. Web. 11 May 2011. http://www.fmsc.org/.
"Hunger Facts - Evangelical Lutheran Church in America." Home - Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Web. 11 May 2011. http://www.elca.org/Our-Faith-In-Action/Responding-to-the-World/ELCA-World-Hunger/Resources/Hunger-Facts.aspx.
Shimshock, Barb. "Feed My Starving Children Information." E-mail interview. 9 May 2011.
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