Children Helping Children
Children helping children is one of the most beautiful phrases I have ever heard. It rolls off my tongue so joyfully. I had the joy of watching a group of amazing kids who came together as a football team to feed the children. There is an amazing charity out in the world called Feed My Starving Children (FMSC). They provide a space and the means for people to come and volunteer to pack food in bags to be delivered to starving children around the world.
The action of working on a project together that will make a positive difference in this world is invaluable to youth. When youth teams volunteer together to create a gift of food for those less fortunate everyone involved wins. Working towards a goal, any goal, draws the team together. They get to reach a goal. The team members have the memory of doing it together. As a mom I see so many benefits for youth working together. Spending time together also strengthens the bond between team members. Best of all their collaboration as a team allows for hungry people to be fed.
My son’s football team did all of those things in packing up bags of food for the world’s hungry at a local Feed My Starving Children location this past summer. Football player siblings and football player moms joined in to team pack the food also. The kids ranged in age from seven to thirteen and they all were able to contribute in some way to the packaging of the food. We needed each person on the team. Each person had a job to do and we all had the same goal. (note: their age guidelines and adult to child ratio criteria is on their website)
Before the Packing
I’d looked forward to taking my kids to volunteer for this for a long time. I feel driven to help feed the world’s hungry people. So when a mom on my son’s football team suggested a team volunteer session to pack bags for FMSC I was overjoyed. We signed up immediately to join in.
When we arrived at packing center we sat on long benches to watch a video about world hunger. We all learned how participating in group packing can help eradicate that hunger. It was invaluable for the kids to see images of starving kids because most of them never see such misery. The images stick. They help the kids realize they can help these poor starving kids just by volunteering their time as a team.
Time To Pack
We were given the instructions on how we would work in groups at stations to package the food. Each person would have a job. Each person would contribute to each bag of food packed. Some were to be scoopers and they would plop a scoop of food into the bag. One bin held vitamin powder, one held dried vegetables, one held soy, and the last had rice. Another team member would fill and weigh the bag and adjust the weight if needed. An adult would seal the bag with a machine that heated the bag to seal it. The last person would ensure the bag was sealed, count the bags, and pack the individual food bags into larger boxes for shipping.
Success
We succeeded! The kids and moms worked together for about forty-five minutes. We were in a large room where other groups were also packing. There was a work group and a church group coming together as a team. It was a beautiful thing to participate in. We were all unified for a short time working together as a unit to make it possible for the hungry to eat.
My favorite part came at the end when they showed us up on the big screen how many bags of food we all packed up in that short time. We did awesome!
We Got a Taste
They provided samples of the food for us all to taste. The kids all agreed that the food was actually very good. I agreed that it was very tasty. It was a perfect way to end the volunteering session to allow us to taste the food we had prepped for shipping.
Perfect Lessons
As a mom, I want to teach my kids to care for the hungry of this world. Knowing that there are starving people out there breaks my heart. I often can’t stop thinking about it. It really bothers me because it shouldn’t happen. Our world is inefficient in that some have too much food that goes uneaten and it turns rotten while in other parts of the world people are starving to death. I wish I could do magic to poof food to them and fill their bellies.
Feed My Starving Children is working to poof food around the world to reach those who need it.
[ctt template=”8″ link=”X5cRL” via=”no” ]Feed My Starving Children is working to poof food around the world to feed those who are starving. We all can help pack it.[/ctt]
As a Christian and as a mom, it saddens and bothers me to the depths of my soul that people go hungry. That day we were able to help relieve some of that hunger by taking a short time out of our day to help volunteer. We will be volunteering again.
We All Need Food
When we are full we fell great. We are able to think clearly when we are full. So many others around the world need food. Food is a necessity on all levels of our functioning. It is vital. We all need to help feed the world’s starving people. We all need to commit to it. Working together we can make a difference; we can help.
Feed My Starving Children is a Christian non-profit organization https://www.fmsc.org/
“He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry.” Psalm 146:7 (NIV)
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What a fun project this must have been!!! And such a great learning experience for the kids. Keep up the great work you do. Love reading your posts!!
It was so great and I loved participating in it with the kids. I think it gave them perspective and as a bonus they actually tried the food and liked it! Amazing for my picky little guys! Such a great experience for us all! Thank you!!
What a wonderful activity! Children helping children does have a nice ring to it! It’s great for your son to experience the joy of serving others.