I see food being wasted everywhere I go and it made me notice how people nowadays don’t understand the value of food and take it for granted. The amount of food wasted in America every day is enough to fill a whole football stadium. In the morning you wake up and you have an idea of what you want to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner and it is easy to access. A lot of kids don’t have the luxury of eating the foods they want or even eating at all.

In less developed countries like South Africa and Haiti, children will go days without any food. Due to the conditions in these countries, it is difficult to find enough food causing children to not get the nutrients that they need. Every five minutes, 25 children will die from malnourishment.

Every few weeks I would volunteer with a couple of friends at an organization called Feed My Starving Children.

Feed My Starving Children is a non-profit organization that packages food for malnourished kids all over the world. This organization sends food to over 70 countries including Peru, Columbia, Kenya , Haiti and South Africa. As of 2011 they have produced over 133 million meals and now have 6 permanent packaging sites and over 565,000 volunteers.

The food that they package is called MannaPack™. It includes rice, soy, dehydrated vegetables and a mixture of flavoring that includes plenty of vitamins and minerals. A single bag of food can provide up to six meals.

Omar is a boy from El Salvador. In this picture he is 8 years old and weighs only 19 pounds. He was close to dying of malnourishment. Him and his family were put on a MannaPack™ eating plan and they saw incredible results.

This is Omar 6 months later. He weighs 73 pounds, which is close to normal for an 8 year old. As you can see, he looks happier and healthier. As of 2012 he is still eating MannaPack™ food and living his life as a kid.

Thousands of kids are being helped just like Omar because of what Feed My Starving Children is doing and I’m glad I was a part of that.

My last time volunteering we packaged 67 boxes of food. Which was 14,472 meals that would feed 39 kids for a whole year. All it took was two hours of volunteering.

The impact it made on me was it helped me really understand the value of food and how lucky I am to have such an easy access to the things I want. I still go and volunteer with Feed My Starving Children because not only do we help feed so many kids but it is a lot of fun! It’s a good feeling knowing you did something that made a difference in someones life.

"MannaPackTM Rice Overview." Our Food. Web. 07 May 2012. <http://www.fmsc.org/page.aspx?pid=427>.

"History of FMSC." About Us -. Web. 07 May 2012. <http://www.fmsc.org/page.aspx?pid=264>.

"Daily Amount of Food Waste in America Enough to Fill a Football Stadium." Daily Amount of Food Waste in America Enough to Fill a Football Stadium. Web. 07 May 2012. <http://www.naturalnews.com/033885_food_waste_America.html>.