Do you have two hours on Saturday, November 4, that you could spare to help “Feed My Starving Children (FMSC)?”
Five hundred volunteers are needed for a two-hour shift to hand-pack food at the gym at Palisades High School. The scientifically-designed meals will then be distributed to schools, orphanages and clinics in 70 countries.
Organizing the event is Pastor Kenneth Davis from the Palisades Lutheran Church. He summarized the nonprofit, FMSC, as wanting “to eradicate hunger one person at a time.”
After his wife died, Davis took his three daughters on missions to different areas of the world, such as Belize, Panama, Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Mexico. While in Belize and then again in El Salvador, “we distributed the packages to the village,” Davis said. “We were so impressed with FMSC.”
He started thinking about it and wondered “What if we hosted a packing event?” With a MobilePack event, about $25,000 must be raised to bring in the truck, supplies and equipment for the one-day operation. “About 180,000 MannaPack meals are assembled,” Davis said.
The pastor took it to his church council, who were excited about the project. Davis felt it was also important to collaborate with the community and went to PaliHi’s Director of Development Michael Rawson, who has agreed to ask Pali students to participate.
Davis has also approached other clergy in town about making this a joint effort. Ultimately, he would like to see this as a project that is done every year as a Pacific Palisades community effort.
He selected the November 4 date because it is the beginning of the holiday season. “People are usually more reflective of the blessings they have,”he said.“I’m praying the generosity of that season will inspire people to help.”
Davis explained that packaging the food is like working on an assembly line, with each person doing one job repeatedly, like maybe adding rice or sealing the bag.
There are eight stations that require 160 volunteers in three different time slots: 9 to 11 a.m.; noon to 2 p.m. and ; 3 to 5 p.m. Fifteen volunteers are also needed for clean-up from 5 to 7 p.m. Will 500 Palisades residents step up?
“This is a great community, and one of the biggest challenges for people is the giving of time,” Davis said. “People wonder how they can give back. This is a real tangible way of doing it.”
FMSC is a Christian nonprofit that has addressed world hunger since 1987. The meals are specifically designed to reverse and prevent malnutrition. In 2015, more than one million volunteers packed nearly 273 million meals through its permanent sites and nationwide MobilePack program. The Minnesota-based charity spends 92 percent of total donations directly on feeding the hungry and has earned the highest 4-star rating from Charity Navigator for 11 consecutive years.
For more information, contact Davis (310) 459-2358 or Rawson at (310) 230-7272. To make a donation to the MobilePack event, visit fmsc.org/MobilePack.
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