October 27, 2022
About 500 more people are expected to gather at Community Christian School’s gymnasium on Dec. 3 to spend hours pouring rice and other ingredients into plastic bags. In doing so, they will pack enough food to feed 298 young people for a year.
This meeting line effort will be from the nutrition program through an organization called Feed My Starving Children, which ships food around the world.
Community Christian School students got a glimpse of the effort Wednesday morning, when David Bowser, a Fort Dodge boy who organizes the project, spoke to them at chapel time.
Bowser told academics that worldwide, 800 million people go to bed hungry.
“In the world, it’s a massive problem,” he said. It’s shocking. But we can make a difference. “
“There is a lack in the world, a wonderful lack in the world,” he added. “God needs us to succeed on the outside. “
While the need is serious and the prospect of generating 108,864 meals in a day is daunting, Bowser told students the task is a lot of fun. He showed photos of existing Community Christian School students running at the last meal preparation event held three years ago.
The school’s principal, Stephanie Coble-Day, challenged the students.
She said if students could raise $1,000 for the lunch-packing project, they would be rewarded with an extended break for all classes.
He added that if they raised $1,250, he would receive a cake in the face, kiss a farm animal or dye his hair blue.
“We can help so many young people around the world,” he said.
Feed My Starving Children held meal packaging events in Fort Dodge for five years until annual events were halted in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Food gathered at previous packaging events headed to the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico, North Korea and Ukraine, according to Bowser.
A goal has been set to raise $32,000 for the upcoming food packaging effort. He said $28,000 would pay for the ingredients and the rest would be split between The Salvation Army, Lord’s Wardrobe, Beacon of Hope and The Lotus Project.
“We’re doing this just so that a local has an effect as well,” he said.
How to help
• To make an effort donation, make checks payable to Fort Dodge Mobile Pack at Crossway Evangelical Free Church, 3058 10th Ave. N. , Fort Dodge, IA 50501. Donations can also be made in fmsc. org.
• The Feed My Starving Children meal preparation effort will be held Dec. 3 at Community Christian School, 2406 nine 1/2 Ave. S. To register as a volunteer, fmsc. org after November 3.
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A planned major assignment for the Webster County courthouse next year will result in the closure of some Array offices.
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