On August 18, the DuBose Law Firm team spent a shift on the packing floor at Feed My Starving Children in Richardson. Working the assembly line alongside other volunteers, our session packed enough meals to feed 80 children in the developing world for an entire year. It was a good couple of hours, and it is the kind of thing that is easier to sign up for than most people assume.
What does a packing shift actually look like?
The work is simple and physical, which is part of why it holds up for a group. Volunteers stand at stations around a table and hand-pack a formula called MannaPack, which combines rice, soy protein, dehydrated vegetables, and a vitamin blend developed for children recovering from malnutrition. One person scoops each ingredient into a funnel. The next weighs the bag to make sure it lands in range. The next seals it, and someone else boxes the sealed bags and stacks them on a pallet.
Nobody needs training beyond the short orientation at the start. The site sets a target for each session and tracks how the floor is doing against it, which turns the last twenty minutes into something close to a competition. Volunteers who cannot stand for long stretches can sit and label bags instead.
Sessions run about an hour and forty-five minutes, and the Richardson site can host up to 100 people at a time. Children as young as five can participate, so groups often show up as families rather than just coworkers.
Where do the meals go?
FMSC ships the meals to partner organizations in more than 70 countries, where they are distributed through schools, orphanages, clinics, and feeding programs. The meals are formulated specifically to reverse undernutrition in children, so the recipients are usually kids who are already in a program that can track how they respond.
The number we packed represents a year of daily meals for 80 children. That framing is the one the organization uses, and it is the one that stuck with our team. A shift that fits inside a workday afternoon covers a full year for a classroom’s worth of kids.
Who is Feed My Starving Children?
FMSC is a Christian nonprofit that has been packing and shipping meals since 1987. It operates eight permanent packing sites across Arizona, Illinois, Minnesota, and Texas, plus traveling MobilePack events that set up temporary lines in host communities. Richardson is the Texas site and opened in 2018 after years of MobilePack events around Dallas and Fort Worth.
The model depends almost entirely on volunteer labor. Donations fund the ingredients and the shipping, and volunteers do the packing, which is why the organization needs to keep a steady stream of people coming through the door every week rather than a handful of large events a year.
How to volunteer in Richardson
The Richardson site is at 1680 N Glenville Drive, Suite 300, Richardson, TX 75081. Registration is required and happens online at fmsc.org, where you can book as an individual or reserve a block for a group of coworkers, friends, students, or a church or scout group.
The site is open Monday through Saturday with sessions running morning through evening, and hours vary by day, so it is worth checking the current schedule when you book. For questions about group scheduling, the Richardson site can be reached at 214-453-5480 or richardsoninfo@fmsc.org.
If your office has been looking for something that works for a mixed group and does not require a full day, this one is hard to beat.
