I have a few friends who have done service projects at a place in Mesa called Feed My Starving Children. They use volunteers to help pack food bags to be sent to to areas in need across the world. I set up a session for students at my college to volunteer, and we had so much fun! I had about 30 people attend, most were students in clubs and our honors program at the college, as well as a few other staff members.
Before they have us start, we sit down and listen to an orientation about what we would be doing, and who we were serving.
They make it a fun competition for the time that we're "working." We are in teams of about 8-10 people, and after we fill each box of 36 food packages, we yell out our table number and the the box number we just packed. The room is full of stations of people doing the same thing. The music is blaring and everyone is having a good time.
Veggies, minerals, soy and rice went into every bag we packed. These are always nutritionally formatted for the needs of the area the food will be sent. Some regions need diets with different ingredients for the needs of kids in those areas. We were packing food for children in the Philippines.
One person holds a bag under the funnel while 3-4 people fill the bags. The next person weighs the bag to be sure it is in the right weight range, and the last person seals all the bags and stacks them on the end of the table. The last person puts 36 bags in each box. Once the box is full, we all yell out "table 7 box 12!" or whatever chant we want to do.
We packed for a little over an hour, and in that time, our entire group (about 100 people or so) packed 28,296 meals, enough to feed 77 children for an entire year. It's amazing how much of a difference we could make in such a short period of time. It was a really amazing experience.
One of our clubs, Psi Beta (psychology honor society) collected over $200 just by passing a collection box around their psychology classes. They were able to donate these funds to FMSC.
Here is our whole group that volunteered from MCC Red Mountain. We had a great time, and I will definitely plan regular trips to FMSC in future semesters.
I have also set up a session on December 30 for my family and friends. If you're interested in joining us, please sign up soon. You can join our group by clicking
this link. Our join code is: 966193. You do have to enter that code to be part of our group. We'll be volunteering from 6-8 pm that evening, and have room for about 16 more to join us. It'll be a great thing to do together during the holiday season. Kids ages 4 and over can participate too, so start teaching your kids now to give back to the world around them. I'm excited to have my kids be part of this experience, and hope to make it a regular thing. Just a side note, this is a Christian organization, and they do mention it a few times throughout orientation, but it's definitely not too "churchy." I was a bit concerned about that, as a non-believer, but I was happy with how they present it. They give the option after for anyone who wants to join them to pray over the boxes, but definitely is not pushed on anyone.
I also made a short video of our time at FMSC. Check it out, and then sign up to join us!
