2 million and counting

This is a story about numbers, kids, and numbers of kids.

For the past 13 years, a planning committee has raised money and recruited volunteers to bring a Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) mobile pack to Owatonna.

The group, comprised of people from different churches, is tasked with raising enough money to pay for the ingredients that create the MannaPack meals – a vitamin-and-mineral fortified rice meal specifically for malnourished children and distributed around the world by FMSC.

It costs $30,000 to bring the supplies to Trinity Lutheran Church and takes three shifts of 160 people each to pack the meals.

If you’re keeping count, that’s 480 volunteers – not counting the planning committee – who create more than 100,000 meals each year.

This year, though, the focus was on a much larger number.

“This afternoon, we’re going to hit our two millionth meal, and that’s a really big deal,” said Cheryl Deason, a member of the planning committee.

It’s also unusual, said Tony Perrault, volunteer engagement specialist for FMSC, which is based out of Eagan.

The annual event in Owatonna each November is the smallest mobile pack allowed; by comparison, Target Field hosts a “Pack at the Park” every year that sees more than 3,000 volunteers over the course of one day.

The “Better Together Mobile Park” at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds brings in nearly 2,000 in a day; large churches around the Twin Cities often hold days-long mobile packs that include up to 10,000 volunteers.

That makes the Owatonna event even more impressive, Perrault said.

“It’s just very uncommon that a small pack like this is able to recur for so many years, and just have that consistent support from the community to be able to continue providing,” he said.

Additionally, “only one in four (mobile pack) events make it to the five-year mark,” Perrault said.

“There’s a whole laundry list of reasons why a pack will shut down,” he said, including a change in (church or event) leadership, available venues or fundraising stressors.

“That’s why it’s so uncommon that a pack this size can reach that two million meals – and keep going,” Perrault said.

Deason said the money for supplies is typically raised through corporate sponsors like Federated Insurance, Daiken, Wenger, Viracon, Cargill and CDI. Participating churches also donate, as do volunteers who come to help with the pack.

Corporate sponsors are also guaranteed a specified number of spots for their employees to volunteer during the pack, providing the businesses with an opportunity for employee engagement.

One year, Deason said, Wenger Corp. offered double the sponsorship money for double the number of volunteer spots.

A Federated employee, Deason said the event “is just such a great cross-section of our community coming together to do something that benefits people we don’t even know, in a Third World country, that are living lives we can’t even imagine.”

Federated usually has 70 volunteer openings that fill up quickly, she said.

“It's an easy way to give back, and it’s one of their beloved things they do.”

At the Nov. 7 pack in Owatonna, one of the community volunteers was Dom Korbel.

“Here he is, the head of our food shelf, and he’s here volunteering,” Deason said of the director of Community Pathways of Steele County.

“This has been a very hard week for them, with SNAP benefits not coming through – yet he showed up here and helped out,” she said.

“All you have to do is bring a good cause to the front, and you have a bunch of people that’ll jump in,” Deason said of the area. “There are a lot of great people here, and it isn’t just the people who donate money. We can raise money … but we couldn’t do anything without volunteers.”

Also packing meals that day were students from public and parochial schools, as well as home school students and members of Scout groups.

Perrault said the two million meals packed and shipped from Owatonna means almost 5,500 kids were served a daily meal for an entire year.

“That is a lot of food and a lot of kids getting served,” he said. “That would be 304 kids served a daily meal from birth to age 18. I’ve never done that math before, but 304 kids …

“Kids feeding kids,” he said.