{"id":12156,"date":"2016-05-17T09:51:10","date_gmt":"2016-05-17T15:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=12156"},"modified":"2016-05-17T09:51:10","modified_gmt":"2016-05-17T15:51:10","slug":"volunteers-to-help-thousands-of-hungry-kids-this-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/05\/volunteers-to-help-thousands-of-hungry-kids-this-weekend\/","title":{"rendered":"Volunteers to help thousands of hungry kids this weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Little\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Abby Little, 8, right, with help from her big sister, Amanda, was collecting donations at Faith Chapel last Sunday for a hunger-fighting project that will take place this weekend.<\/p><\/div>\n

During just four two-hour shifts this weekend in Billings, volunteers will be packaging enough food to feed almost everyone in Montana one meal.<\/p>\n

But the food won\u2019t be going to people in Montana. It will be delivered to severely malnourished children around the world. As many as 750 volunteers are expected to show up this Friday and Saturday at the Montana Pavilion at MetraPark to make up to 150,000 food packets, each of which contains six servings.<\/p>\n

The project is part of Feed My Starving\u00a0Children<\/a>, a Minnesota-based charity that has seven permanent food-packing sites in three states. It also helps to organize \u201cMobilePack\u201d events like the one scheduled in Billings, the first ever in Montana. Last year alone, according to the Christian nonprofit agency, nearly 800,000 volunteers in 35 states packed more than 64 million meals.<\/p>\n

The idea of bringing a MobilePack event to Billings started with Keith Lauver<\/a>, of Red Lodge, whose Cooksimple<\/a> line of healthful boxed meals are sold in nearly 6,000 stores around the country and in Canada and Australia.<\/p>\n

He said he \u201cintersected\u201d with the Feed My Starving\u00a0Children organization in the course of running his business.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just touched a chord in my heart and I knew I had to get involved and help them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He donated some of his profits to the group and got involved in its events in other states. Two years ago his wife, Theresa, and one of his sons, Eli, went to a MobilePack gathering in Phoenix. Eli in particular was excited by the opportunity to play a direct, hands-on role in dealing with a global problem.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>When his son got home, Lauver said, \u201cHe asked me a very basic question: Why aren\u2019t we doing this in Montana.\u201d Lauver\u2019s short answer, he said, was \u201c\u2019We should.\u2019 It just took a couple of years for the timing to be right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Setting up a MobilePack event takes a lot of volunteers and a huge amount of organization work, Lauver said, so he turned to the SAGE Homeschool Co-op (the acronym stands for Seeking a Godly Education), whose members gather every Monday at Harvest Church to socialize and encourage one another.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose families got behind this project,\u201d Lauver said. \u201cThey said, \u2018Absolutely. Let\u2019s get our kids involved in a service project.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Keith\"<\/a>

Keith Lauver<\/p><\/div>\n

They did so by having a core group of children serve on committees that would deal with volunteer recruitment, logistics, fundraising, hospitality and marketing. A separate group organized prayer sessions to pray for the success of the project. Since most of the homeschool teachers are mothers, each committee was led by one of the fathers, who acted as the coach. One child served as a captain for each team and the rest as team members.<\/p>\n

Their original goal was to round up at least 500 volunteers, who would prepare 100,000 food packets. But the number of volunteers who have made commitments recently passed 700, and the goal now is to make 150,000 packets.<\/p>\n

When the people at Feed My Starving\u00a0Children heard about those numbers, Lauver said, \u201cThey were blown away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every single meal bag is packed by volunteers and the project is 100 percent paid for by local fundraising efforts. Feed My Starving\u00a0Children will deliver all the ingredients, packaging and equipment to the Montana Pavilion either Thursday night or Friday morning, Lauver said. A three-person team from the national organization will be on hand to coordinate the event.<\/p>\n

The basic meal bag is called MannaPack Rice and consists of rice; soy nuggets for protein; vitamins, minerals and a vegetarian flavoring; and dehydrated vegetables for flavor and nutrition. Other specialty packs are made for children too young to eat the rice mix and another is designed to help people recover from diarrhea, the leading cause of death of malnourished children.<\/p>\n

All the meals are designed for simple preparation\u2014just add boiling water to the rice dish\u2014and to provide maximum nutrition. Each one costs 22 cents and provides six servings.<\/p>\n

\"Bag\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Each bag of food holds six servings.<\/p><\/div>\n

As of the end of last week, organizers of the local effort had raised $15,000 of the $35,000 they will need to make 150,000 packages. One of the most successful fundraising tools, Lauver said, was having the kids collect quarters in M&M candy tubes. Each tube holds enough quarters to make about 60 packets, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve received thousands of dollars in just quarters,\u201d Lauver said. \u201cA quarter is roughly the cost of a meal, and the kids really latched onto that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Volunteers will be working in two-hour shifts\u2014one shift on Friday evening and three during the day on Saturday\u2014and people are welcome to work more than one shift.<\/p>\n

You can volunteer by clicking on the link on the Facebook page<\/a> created for the event, or you can call Lauver at (406) 425-1743. He would also be more than happy to talk to you about donations.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to watch a video about the Billings project.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During just four two-hour shifts this weekend in Billings, volunteers will be packaging enough food to feed almost everyone in Montana one meal. But the food won\u2019t be going to people in Montana. It will be delivered to severely malnourished children around the world. As many as 750 volunteers are expected to show up this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[1689,4372,2858,1686,4373],"class_list":["post-12156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","tag-cooksimple","tag-feed-my-starving-children","tag-harvest-church","tag-keith-lauver","tag-sage-homeschool-co-op","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}