"It feels so good to know that some kid out there is gonna live one more day."
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7,000 kids actually. At
Feed My Starving Children, “people volunteer to package up food for the people that really need it.” In an hour and a half Mylin’s group of 30 volunteers packaged almost 1500 meal packets, enough to feed 7000 people for a day. Mylin’s efforts alone helped feed more than 100. In a world where 30,000 children die every day because of complications related to starvation, Mylin feels like she can make a real difference.
This Minnesota fifth grader is a Junior Girl Scout. She has helped raise money for scouting by selling the famous cookies. She has contributed to holiday food
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11 year old Mylin of Coon Rapids, MN volunteers to make food packets for children in Haiti.
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drives in her community and she started a website (with her dad’s help):
greenmakesadifference.com.
But this was her first time at Feed My Starving Children.
“There are many different ways that you can help and there’s not just a best way. Anything that will help a little bit will help a lot. You know, you think you’re donating $5
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to Feed My Starving Children to keep that organization running. Well really, you’re helping a lot of kids. You’re feeding a lot of kids just by donating $5.”
“Anything that you can do is gonna help.” Mylin wants people to know that. She thinks that some children starve because people don’t realize that they can help.
Part of her reason for volunteering is to show people that it doesn’t take much to have a real impact. She believes that everyone can get involved and even the smallest actions make a big difference.
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Washing up before food packaging.
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The food that Mylin helped package was destined for earthquake victims in Haiti. It took more than a month to get on the volunteer schedule at FMSC. In the days and weeks
In an hour and a half Mylin and her family packaged enough food to provide meals for almost 500 people.
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following the January earthquake, FMSC was inundated with volunteers. The same was true of donation rates. Thousands of meals were packaged and shipped in the rush to help that followed the headlines coming out of Port-au-Prince.
"As long as I have been here (10 1/2 years), there has never been such an out pouring of volunteers wanting and waiting to help." Volunteer Coordinator Patty Kleve wonders how long it will take for things to return to normal. "Haiti will need our help for years to come." Unfortunately, normalcy is something that may never return
to Haiti.
“I gotta do this. My heart was telling me I had to.” Mylin is hoping to return to
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Feed My Starving Children every month. “It was amazing fun and afterwards I felt really good about myself because I knew I did something good to help other people.”
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She also said that it was a great way to spend time with her family and that she felt like a cook. When she grows up Mylin wants to be a Broadway actress, work for a volunteer organization, and, “live on an island by myself and live off of what I have.”
You can find out more about Feed My Starving Children at
FMSC.org.
They are a Twin Cities based organization with an additional processing facility in Aurora, IL outside of Chicago.
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Mylin's Day Seven Bracelet reminds her to be thankful for what she has.
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