GRAND FORKS – The local Feed My Starving Children organizers need about 160 more volunteers for their annual MobilePack event, set for Friday and Saturday, April 11 and 12, at the Minnkota Power Cooperative headquarters, 5301 32nd Ave. S.
Organizers have set a goal of 404,352 packed meals and $117,000 to pay for those meals.
For more information on how to volunteer or give financially to this effort, go to the
Feed My Starving Children website.
The funds will be used to “purchase the food we are packing,” said Jodie Storhaug, who leads the effort with her husband Bruce Storhaug. For more information, call (701) 741-2902 or email jstorhaug@gra.midco.net.
If this year’s meal-packing goal is met, the local effort will surpass five million meals packed here since its inception, she said. Those meals would feed 1,107 children for a year.
In its 14 years of operation, area volunteers have packed 4,754,878 meals and raised $911,569 to pay for these meals, Storhaug said.
This year, there may be openings for volunteers across all six shifts, scheduled three per day, she said. But the greatest need is for the 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. and the evening shift, 6-8:15 p.m., on Friday.
Nearly 90 volunteers – the largest number of shift openings – are needed for Friday’s mid-day shift. The mid-day time slot is a bit harder to fill, since it spans work and school schedules – for that “we rely on retirees,” Storhaug said. If all shifts are filled, 1,680 volunteers would be packing throughout the campaign, she said.
In the past, volunteers have come from 40 churches and communities in northeastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota.
In addition to volunteers’ time, the local organization is also seeking funds to meet its financial commitment of $117,000, Storhaug said. About $30,000 is needed to meet that goal.
Many businesses, organizations, service clubs, schools and individuals have contributed financially to the Feed My Starving Children MobilePack event, she said.
The local organization can continue to raise funds to meet that goal for 55 days after the MobilePack event. Any funds raised in excess of the goal will be applied to next year’s meal-packing event.
The goal for last year’s FMSC MobilePack, $95,000, was achieved. Nearly 1,300 volunteers packed 326,592 meals, enough to feed 894 children for a year in some of the world’s poorest countries.
During its first packing event, in 2011, the organization raised about $54,700 and packed 287,928 meals to feed 788 children for a year, Storhaug told the Herald last year. The meals packed in 2011 were sent to Northwest Haiti Christian Mission.
Each year, the meals are sent to humanitarian organizations to distribute in countries, such as Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Namibia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, among others.
This is the 14th year the MobilePack event has been held, Storhaug said. In 2020, the event was canceled and replaced by a virtual event. Local organizers donated the funds, which had been raised, to be used for the purchase of food that was processed “in a more automated way,” rather than packed by hand, she said.
In 2021, the event was not held because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The nonprofit Feed My Starving Children organization operates in 40 states, including North Dakota, Minnesota and Montana.