Palmetto’s National Honor Society packages food to feed children

Over 150 people of all ages from all over Miami came together at the Miami-Dade Fairgrounds, Friday, to pack thousands of meals for children across the world.

Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) is a non-profit Christian organization dedicated to feeding starving and malnourished children in 70 developing countries throughout the globe. FMSC has permanent packing sites and mobile packing sites; these sites travel throughout the nation, in search of volunteers to pack the meals sent to children.

“We will have five shipping containers go to Nicaragua, a couple going to the Dominican Republic and some going to Haiti,” FMSC event supervisor, Marci Wirtz said.

Palmetto’s National Honor Society worked at the mobile packing site and after a brief orientation, 24 Palmetto students got to work. The students filled bags with nutritious vitamins, vegetables, soy and rice; each bag serves 6 hungry children. It costs 22 cents to purchase one meal for one child. 99.6 percent of the packaged meals reach their intended location of a child in need.

Students worked together- taking turns filling, weighing, sealing and boxing hundreds of bags of food to be shipped.

“It’s really cool to see people of all ages, backgrounds, cultures coming together to feed children.” Marci Wirtz said.

The NHS students spent two hours bonding with one another, working in pairs while pouring ingredients into a bag held by the second team. That team then weighed the bags to ensure the accurate measure of ingredients in each bag. The bag was finally turned over to the team that sealed and boxed the food for delivery.

“I’m really happy, how much we packed exceeded my expectations.” senior Cassandra Barrett said.

The National Honor Society students packed almost 13,000 meals for children all across the Caribbean. A total of 88,992 meals were packaged and ready to feed 244 children for a full year.

“It was a very eye opening and it made me appreciate what I had. It was so cool packing food and seeing how our actions made a big impact.” junior Sofia Guisasola said.