feeding god's hungriest children

Last week we completed our first family service project.

Our friend's church hosted an all-weekend event packing meals for Feed My Starving Children.

We signed up for one 2-hour shift.

Orientation took place in a darkened middle school lunch room with over 200 volunteers.

The church showed their outreach music video.

The service organization's leader gave a detailed - albeit abstract - description of the organization, the project, and provided some education about starvation in third-world countries.  

They closed with a video highlighting interviews with some of the people who have received nourishment from their organization.  It felt a bit like one of those timeshare sales pitches you go through in order to get the "free" amusement park tickets...we just wanted to get on with the amusement (packing)!

{The salient parts of the pitch?}

• FMSC is a non-profit Christian organization with over 60 non-government partners worldwide
• FMSC and their partners feed God's hungriest children all over the globe and
• Over 90% of all donations go directly to the feeding program rather than administration and operation costs.

Check 'em out:

Feed My Starving Children 

When all was said and done, we ended up with 45 minutes of actual packing time.

{disappointing}

We did, however, have a blast and since the project had young volunteers in mind, our son could participate in nearly all of the jobs in the packing process!  It was a productive time and our kiddo has since requested that find another time to volunteer.

{mission accomplished}

 

Now, if you are a social worker married to a transportation planner and both of you think critically about life, with a healthy dose of cynicism thrown in for good measure, this is what your conversation might look like around the breakfast table the next morning:

The number of volunteers this organization is able to employ in its efforts is remarkable and provides a true testament to the power of volunteer mobilization. But is is only through these volunteer efforts the organization is able to keep their administration costs down, which means the awesomeness of the volunteer mobilization is actually masking the true costs of the organization's overall mission.  If one were to take into account the cost of fuel/energy for volunteers to get to the event, the energy costs absorbed by the host institution, and the time spent at the event, it is possible the mission to feed God's hungriest children throughout the globe could actually be done by machines. 

{For less cost.  Just sayin'}

And what about God's hungriest children?  What about those who don't get fed - those for whom an organization hasn't partnered with FMSC on their behalf?  And is it any more compelling to label them God's children rather than "the hungriest?"  Besides, we were all sold on the significance and importance of the project before we even stepped into the lunchroom.  So beyond the education piece (which is always vital), there seemed to be little value added for the sales pitch.

And finally, don't get me started on the emphasis on non-government partnerships.  This raises all sorts of questions and concerns for me and will have to be a blog post for another time.

{All cynicism aside} 

It was a good time and one we will likely repeat together.