Feed My Starving Children Asks Area Volunteers to "Change the World from Chicago"

CHICAGO, April 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Tomorrow Minnesota-based Christian hunger relief organization Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) officially launches the public phase of its $1.55 million Chicago expansion campaign, "Change the World from Chicago."  

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120419/CG90840)

The campaign will kick off at the 4th Annual Gala & Auction to benefit Feed My Starving Children, held at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in suburban Rosemont.  The campaign's quiet phase, launched late last year, raised $500,000 in early leadership gifts.  During the gala, FMSC expects to reach the halfway mark in funding the campaign, making the public phase goal a total of $780,000.

Feed My Starving Children produces nutritious meals designed to restore malnourished children to full health. Volunteers hand-pack the meals, and they're shipped to missions and humanitarian agencies working in 70 countries around the world. FMSC maintains three packing sites in Minnesota, one in Tempe, Ariz., and two in the Chicago area. Since the 2008 opening of a full-time packing site in Aurora, Ill. and the 2010 opening of a part-time site in Schaumburg, Chicagoland volunteers have packed more than 80 million meals. They were distributed to hungry families in Haiti, Kenya, Nicaragua, Swaziland and many other developing nations.

All proceeds from the Chicago expansion campaign will go to taking the Schaumburg, Ill. facility full time, and opening a third packing site (still in the selection process) in the north suburbs by Spring of 2013.

"The Chicago area expansion will double our capacity, from 32 million meals, which feeds 85,000 children daily for a year, to 71 million meals, which will nourish 194,000 children each day for a year," says Chicago Campaign Chair Dawn Eber, Managing Director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, FMSC board member and chair of the Chicago Area FMSC Council.  "We're facing growing food needs worldwide and we have a long waiting list of volunteers."  With the expansion, FMSC will be able to welcome a total of 300,000 volunteers, a substantial increase from the current capacity of 122,000.

Nationally, FMSC expects to nearly double its meal production from 133 million meals in 2011-2012 to 235 million by 2014-2015.

Each meal costs 22 cents to produce and 93% of all donations directly support the food program. All meals are packed by volunteers, who, along with donors, pay for 100% of FMSC meals. FMSC receives no government aid.

To donate and join the campaign visit www.fmsc.org/changetheworldchicago

A Christian non-profit founded in 1987, Feed My Starving Children tackles world hunger by sending volunteer-packed, nutritious meals to nearly 70 countries, where they're used to operate orphanages, schools, clinics and other building blocks of healthy communities. Last year FMSC produced 133 million meals, maintained its seventh consecutive four-star rating from Charity Navigator and spent 93% of total donations directly on feeding the hungry.

SOURCE Feed My Starving Children