Goal for Sumter's 5th-annual Feed My Starving Children is 500K meals

Thousands of Sumterites will work to feed thousands of starving children in the developing world this August.

Through a partnership with the charity Feed My Starving Children, volunteers are aiming to prepare more than 500,000 life-saving meals at the Christian nonprofit's MobilePack event Aug. 5-8 at Sumter County Civic Center.

"During our five previous years of packing, Sumter reached and surpassed the one million meal mark since we began in 2014," said Sarah Bradham, chairwoman of the local event. "This year, we are striving to pack more than half a million meals during one event, and that means we need 2,500 volunteers to help label, scoop and box the ingredients."

Feed My Starving Children was founded in 1987 to tackle world hunger by sending volunteer-packed, nutritious meals that are formulated specifically for malnourished children to embedded missionaries in an estimated 70 countries. Meals contain vitamins, dried vegetables, soy and rice and are donated to orphanages, schools, clinics and feeding programs to break the cycle of poverty.

Last year, the charity, which spends 91% of total donations on feeding the hungry, welcomed 1.3 million volunteers to pack 365 million meals at permanent sites and MobilePack events.

In Sumter, a small group set out to bring the community together in 2014 with a hope to fund and hand-pack 100,000 meals. Bradham said there will be morning, afternoon and evening packing sessions this year to accommodate various work schedules.

Registration to volunteer can be completed online at http://bit.ly/SFMSC1 and consists of 12 two-hour packing sessions and one session each for set up and clean up.

"The cost per meal is 22 cents, and we need to raise $111,000 to pay for the actual ingredients that we will be packing," she said.

For additional information or questions, contact Chris Pendry at Sfmscmobilepack@gmail.com, or follow the group on Facebook @sumterfmsc.