I got a real job!!!

Feed My Starving Children offered me a job and I have accepted it!!! 

I first learned about Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) when I was in El Salvador a couple of years ago.  The homeless shelter run by the Lutheran Church receives food from FMSC and it was there that I saw the food being used as well as the boxes of food that had been marked as being packed by volunteers in Aurora, IL.  When I got home, I learned more about FMSC and saw they were a pretty awesome organization.  So, when I started looking for jobs, this was one of the places I kept checking for open positions.

Feed My Starving Children was founded in 1987 by a Minnesotan who had taken a trip to Honduras and then felt called to do something about the hungry children he witnessed there and knew existed around the world.  Working with food scientists, FMSC developed a specially designed food formula that would provide the nutrients needed to restore starving children to health.  In order to make a significant difference in alleviating hunger, FMSC sought to find the most cost-effective way to produce and package the food.  They found that volunteers could package the food much better and cheaper than machines.  So, volunteers from churches, community organizations, businesses, etc. have been an essential part of FMSC.  FMSC partners with nonprofit organizations around the world to distribute the food to those in need.  The vision of the organization is to “strive to eliminate starvation in children throughout the world by helping to instill compassion in people to hear and respond to the cries of those in need.”  FMSC has been growing rapidly over the past few years, with hundred of thousands of volunteers packing millions and millions of meals.

I’m going to be a Team Leader.  I’ll be leading groups of 10-90 volunteers that come to pack food at FMSC’s location in Aurora.  It will be my job to ensure that the volunteers follow the proper food packing procedure and to create a positive volunteer experience.  I’ll get to tell the volunteers about FMSC and its mission, teach them the packing procedure, and make sure everything goes smoothly from start to clean up.  Then I get to see a whole bunch of food shipped off to hungry people all over the world.

That’s right.  This is the real deal.  I’m going to be working at a faith-based non-profit organization! 

If you can’t tell, I’m pretty excited about this job.  First, I’m excited because it is a job, a source of income.  Second, I’m excited because I get to work for a great organization that is doing great work around the world.  But most importantly, I’m excited because this job will provide me an opportunity to do what I am called to do- teach people about injustice in the world and then encourage and enable them to DO something about that injustice.  In a very concrete way I will be able to educate people about the injustice of hunger around the world and then immediately give them a way to respond.

The only downside of this job (at least the only downside I know about so far): this is only a part time position. I’m only guaranteed 12 hours a week, but there is the possibility of picking up other shifts as they are available.

I’m going to start soon- I’m not quite sure when exactly- probably within the next week.