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"Tomorrow seven of us will go and spend a couple of hours at the FMSC Center to celebrate your birthday,” my daughter Gulnar Sidhwa informed me when we were in Arizona visiting the family. We had little idea of what this was. The next afternoon, an all Parsi group of Nazreen and Furrokh Cooper, Dr Cyrus Austin, Gulnar, her teenaged son Zubin, my husband Edul and I reached the sprawling FMSC center that included a large shopping area, an auditorium and a huge packing complex. The place was buzzing with groups of seven people from different families, churches, schools and clubs.
We were welcomed by a young woman whose opening words were, "Thank you and God bless you for being here today afternoon.” She went on to explain that FMSC stood for Feed My Starving Children, a Christian non-profit organization that was started in Minnesota, USA, in 1987 to fulfill its goal: "We believe no child in the world should starve while there are people who have more than they can eat. Hunger causes nearly half the deaths of children under five years of age in the poorer countries and in regions of famine, earthquakes and other natural calamities.”

 

 

 

 

 

The groups gathered that day were to pack food to be sent to the Philippines. We were one among many such groups of "people helping people” in 70 countries around the world. "Your voluntary help in packing food can turn hunger into hope. It takes only $ 88 (Rs 6,250) to feed a child for a whole year, inclusive of packing and distributing to different corners of the world,” we learnt. In 2018 more than 1.3 million volunteers packed and provided 365 million meals. The money for the food came from church donations, contributions by philanthropic individuals and from the sale of artifacts and goods in their shops.
After this briefing, we were requested to leave all our personal belongings in safety lockers, wash our hands well with sanitizers, and wear gloves and caps before entering the huge packing hall that had provisions for groups of seven working around each table. The MannaPack, as each food packet is called, is filled with prescribed portions of rice, proteins, carbohydrates and essential nutrients that can safely be eaten by anyone aged one year and above. We helped in weighing the different ingredients, packing and sealing the plastic MannaPacks that were then put into cardboard boxes and sealed. Younger volunteers, mostly boys, do the heavy work of bringing in tubs of different foods like rice, soya, etc and carry away the sealed cardboard boxes to the dispatch room.
Apart from the joy and warmth of knowing some unknown child in a distant land will have food to eat, there was a lot of companionship, laughing and talking within and between the many groups. "It is great to have children helping children,” said the mother of a family at the table next to ours, adding, "My children have learned today that not everyone is as fortunate as we are, here in USA. And that the next meal cannot be taken for granted by every child.”
During the two hours spent in the packing room, a total of 190 boxes consisting of 41,040 meals were collectively packed by all the groups. Everyone came out feeling good and moved to make a donation or buy something from the varied array on sale. There were T-shirts, scarves, trinkets, artifacts, spices and more.
My daughter came and gave me a hug and a T-shirt as my birthday present. The T-shirt that was so soft and comfortable was said to have been made from recycled plastic bottles. But I was taken aback when I read the price tag! $88 for a T-shirt? Seeing my expression, my daughter whispered, "Mum, you will be feeding a hungry child for a whole year and be blessed for it every day! Can a present get any better?”