Partnership with Feed My Starving Children

As one of our centennial service projects, the Rotary Club of Saint Paul has established a partnership with Minnesota-based Feed My Starving Children. The goals of this partnership effort are:

• to make an impact on world hunger and
• to involve young people and Rotarians in a meaningful, hands-on international service effort.

Feed My Starving Children provides nutritious meals specifically designed to support severely malnourished children throughout the world. The meals are a rice and soy based formula developed by Minnesota food scientists. All that is needed to prepare the meal for serving is boiling water. The organization works with missionaries, NGOs, and other partners (including Rotary Clubs) in the countries to which it sends food. In its 22+ years operation, Feed My Starving Children has lost only two containers of food. It currently sends food to 53 countries.

The meals are packed entirely by volunteers, the majority of whom are young people. In 2009, over 400,000 volunteers packaged 93 million meals for distribution around the world. The organization operates from three sites in the Twin Cities and one in the Chicago area. In addition, it has been expanding its capacity to conduct packing events at locations removed from its fixed sites.

The Rotary Club of Saint Paul has provided the organization with a 53-foot semi trailer to allow the transport of raw materials and equipment to support packing events in the upper Midwest and beyond. The truck was placed in service in mid-November of 2009. By the end of its first Rotary year it had supported the work of over 45,000 volunteers who packed more than 8.5 million meals.

We also sponsored our own mobile packing event in Saint Paul in May of 2010. In two days, 490 volunteers - Rotarians, their families and friends - packed more than 114,000 meals. The club has committed to sponsoring additional 100,000+ meal events each year through 2014. The 2011 event will be held April 29 and 30.

» Read the 2011 progress report

A third element of our efforts involves encouraging and mentoring other Rotary Clubs in District 5960 to sponsor mobile packing events in their own communities. Several such events are now planned for the 2010-2011 Rotary year.  Until October 2010, the Rotary Club of Saint Paul has raised more than $120,000 to support the Feed My Starving Children portion of its centennial service effort.

By the end of the 2013-2014 Rotary year, we plan to

• directly pack more than 500,000 meals,
• to involve more than 100,000 young people in this meaningful service project, and
• to encourage as many other clubs as possible to sponsor meal packing events in their communities.

While it is difficult to project exactly, we currently estimate that the Rotary Club of Saint Paul will directly or indirectly provide for the packing of more than 30 million meals for the world's hungry children by 2014.