More than 500 volunteers including Wartburg students, faculty, staff and Waverly church members packed 100,000 nutritional meals to be sent to 50 different countries through Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) last week. 

FMSC is a nonprofit organization that helps pack meals and send them to hunger-stricken nations around the world.

About 11,000 meals were packed each hour, which could feed around 35 families for a year. Each of the “packers” was challenged to raise $10 and Thrivent Financial Insurance for Lutherans matched it one to three. The company will give an additional one-third of the total raised.

Pastor Larry Trachte said $15,000 is their goal, which would cover the 15-cent cost for each meal. $11,000 has been raised so far.

Trachte said students are not are not as poor as they think compared to some of the people facing hunger. He said Feed My Starving Children is only part of the answer and there needs to be an answer that will be long-term. 

FMSC stems from Minnesotan’s trip to Haiti
More than 18,000 children die every day because of starvation or starvation-related causes.  FMSC is fighting this statistic. A Minnesota businessman who visited Haiti started the program because he was overwhelmed by how hunger was an everyday ordeal in Haiti.

He was walking in Haiti one day and heard the cries of a baby coming from an outhouse, where he discovered that the baby had been thrown in by its mother. He tied a rope around his waist and lowered himself to rescue the baby. “Baby Moses,” as the baby was soon called, was put in a shelter.

This experience inspired the man to develop a meal consisting of rice, soy, dehydrated vegetables and 20 vitamins that would curb hunger in countries like Haiti.

Laura Nielssen ‘04, FMSC off-site operations manager, approached Trachte about making Wartburg a packing site.

Other events address hunger
The IS 201 Poverty and Social Wealth classes will sponsor a similar event called “Empty Bowls” at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the Chapel Commons and partake in a soup and bread bowl supper.

The cost is $10, and those who attend may keep their bowl decorated by Wartburg students and Big Brothers and Big Sisters participants. Proceeds go towards the Salvation Army and their food program in Waterloo.