Feed My Starving Children: A Suburban Family Tradition

AURORA, IL — Close to a bustling Route 59, where Naperville meets Aurora, is a large, mostly empty corporate office park. On the mostly quiet eve of Thanksgiving, one building was teeming with about a hundred smiling volunteers, exuberant for the task at hand: packing 800 boxes of food for shipment all over the world.

Feed My Starving Children is a Christian nonprofit that provides nutritionally complete meals specifically formulated for malnourished children all over the world. In its Aurora warehouse and packaging center, volunteers gather to quickly fill packages with ingredients. Emily Padilla, a team leader, has been with the organization for two years.

"Literally, everything that's done here can be done by machine, but that's not how we do it," said Padilla. For these volunteers, it's not just about the food. It's about tradition and camaraderie. "Lots of families come back now this time of year. This is their holiday thing that they do."

Some come to FMSC to fulfill community service hours, others come from church and scout groups. There's no shortage of families. After a brief orientation, they're all off to the races.

The Benet Academy girls varsity basketball team was the life of the packing party, singing along with the loud music in the background, shouting victory cries with every box completed. Seventeen players and their coaches come to Feed My Starving Children every year. It's easy, they say, so why not?

Quentin Manieson, a 4th grader, inspects the bags' weight before they're sealed.

Quentin's family is joined by new friends, pictured left, on the Nov. 22 afternoon shift.

Picture closest to farthest: Sarah, Mia, Emma and Malley are in Brownie Troop 71005 in Lockport. They've been rotating, measuring the ingredients carefully, but with a sense of urgency to fulfill their goals.

Chris (left), team leader, and Daniel (right), from St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Naperville, pack about 2,000 pounds of rice. "Eye of the Tiger" playing loudly in the background doesn't seem to be hurting their productivity.

Pamela Burns (left) and Emily Padilla (right) seal a case ready for pickup. Padilla said there's no shortage of people who sign up online, but they have trouble with getting people to fulfill their obligations. She is always on the hunt for reliable volunteers, some who start at just five years old. And not just around the holidays, but other times of the year when it's a bit slower.

An enthusiastic volunteer (not pictured) is overheard in the background: "Keep it up, your next goal is 150! Go!" He keeps the momentum up for a nearby table of volunteers, who are placing expiration date stickers on packages. Hayley Grove, 18, is a senior at Metea High School. She needed to fulfill community service hours for high school, and then just kept coming back, she said.

"It's flexible with my work schedule. At other places, I'd have to spend time training. Here, you're just ready to go from day one." Plus, she added, other volunteer jobs seem monotonous. At FMSC, she's assigned to a different task nearly every time she enters the building. It also means she works with different people every time, like Erica Carlson (middle),17, and Savannah Lemmons (right), 18.

If you're interested in volunteering, signing up is easy, Padilla said.