Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Volunteers aim to pack over 1 million meals in four days for Feed My Starving Children Warsaw MobilePack this year.
Event chair Megan Stone said this year FMSC started Monday and goes until Thursday at Warsaw Community High School’s TRAC.
Stone said Feed My Starving Children is a Christian nonprofit organization founded in 1987 out of Minneapolis, Minn.
This year is the ninth FMSC event that has been held in Warsaw. The first was in 2014. In 2020, the event was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Warsaw was part of the FMSC relaunch and hosted an event at Lincoln Elementary School, she said.
“We are going to be packing vitamins, veggies, rice and soy. It’s scientifically formulated to help children worldwide who are encountering severe malnutrition,” she said.
The packs are shipped through FMSC to 100 different countries, wherever the need is. “At this time, we don’t know where our meals will be sent, but we will soon find out when they are shipped.”
Stone said they have contracted to pack about 1.1 million meals. This is going to one of the largest packing events in Warsaw’s history. The largest packing event was in 2018 with 1,135,000 meals. This year, it’s going to take almost 5,000 volunteers to get the job done.
Since 2014, Stone said they’ve packed over 6 million meals and they’re hoping to exceed 7 million this year.
Each meal costs 29 cents to make and $106 will feed a child for an entire year, she said.
This year, there are nine shifts over the four-day period, which includes three community shifts. The shifts kicked off with the first community shift from 6 to 8 p.m. Monday. The two other community shifts are 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday. Students from Warsaw Community Schools and Sacred Heart will pack meals.
From 2 to 4 p.m. Wednesday, there will be the corporate challenge.
Stone said the corporate challenge is where all the business leaders are invited to bring their teams of volunteers for a “hands-on mission experience, for a team-building competition. So each team will be competing against the other teams to pack the most meals,” she said, adding most of the corporate leaders are sponsors.
The largest group is from Zimmer Biomet with over 240 volunteers. DePuy Synthes, Maple Leaf Farms, Wildman Business Group, Orchard Medical Development, Sym Financial Advisors, Warsaw Community Church, TL Jackson Construction Inc., G & G Hauling & Excavating, OrthoWorx, Kosciusko REMC, Jasmine Gabriel-Schliff Family Dentistry and Medtronic are also part of the corporate challenge.
There will be over 300 volunteers during the corporate challenge and Stone said they hope to pack 325,000 meals in the two-hour shift. Stone said it’s by far the largest packing shift during the event. The team with the biggest packing numbers will get the Hunger Hero Champion trophy.
Stone said there are 500 volunteer spots available. Each evening has a number of spots available, from 20 to 40 spots. If anyone is interested in volunteering, they can go to warsawmobilepack.com.
Anyone 5 and older are able to volunteer. Stone said there is a job for everyone, from warehousing, labeling and working at the packing stations.
In addition to packing meals for FMSC, each volunteer was invited to bring canned food items to help support some of the local food pantries.
“Our goal for this entire event is to build compassion throughout the Warsaw community and bring hope to vulnerable children throughout the world through our contributions and our efforts. And that we believe that we can not only help our local neighbors, but we are called to help and care for our global neighbors as well,” Stone said.
