Two Charities’ Teamwork

Two Charities' Teamwork Feeds Millions

	Feed My Starving Children donates almost 200 tractor-trailer loads of rice casserole meals each year to Food For The Poor. This child holds a package of MannaPack, a rice casserole meal of dried vegetables, vitamins and soy. The two charities have been working together since 2008, and thousands of lives have been saved.
Related Item: View Photos of the Children Receiving the Food

COCONUT CREEK, Fla. (Dec. 19, 2014) – When the relationship between Feed My Starving Children and Food For The Poor started in 2009, no one anticipated that six years later it would add up to almost 50 million meals a year. But that was the total when the figures were tallied at the end of November 2014.

More than 180 tractor-trailer loads of lifesaving food were donated this year by Feed My Starving Children, and shipped by Food For The Poor to children and families threatened by extreme hunger and malnutrition throughout the Caribbean and Latin America.

Matt Muraski has been Vice President of International Programs with Feed My Starving Children since 2006. In that time, the Minnesota-based Christian ministry has grown from nine distribution partners to more than 70.

“Food For The Poor is one of our best partners. At first, it was daunting. Food For The Poor was so big, and we were so small. The partnership started with shipping an initial container to Food For The Poor and grew from there. It’s been built with a lot of trust and personal relationship-building,” Muraski said. “FFP’s efficiency and reach has enabled us to be innovative in food relief delivery.”

While pointing out the amount of food relief delivered and its importance, Muraski also noted the Christian impetus behind the charity's work.

“It’s what we do with the food beyond the bag, the true installation of hope and sharing. It is compassion as God would have it,” Muraski said.

The food is delivered in three forms: MannaPack rice meals with vegetables, vitamins and soy that makes six servings when combined with boiling water; a MannaPack Potato-D mix meant to help with dysentery-like cases; and MannaPack Potato-W that serves as a formula for babies whose mothers are too malnourished to provide adequate breast milk. The bags of dehydrated potatoes are mixed with boiling water, and each one provides 12 servings.

Volunteers pack the food at events around the United States, and the bags add up quickly. One container of bags contains 272,160 meals.

“While we have a very large and efficient Gifts In Kind department, food donations are difficult to come by,” said Mark Khouri, Director of Gifts In Kind at Food For The Poor. “We feed hundreds of thousands of people each day, and when we don’t get food donated, we must purchase it.

The relationship with Feed My Starving Children gives us access to a steady supply of nutritious food. It is literally saving lives.”

When Food For The Poor ships food or goods to those in need, staff often follow up to meet the people who are receiving help. Follow this link to watch how one Guatemalan mother is using MannaPacks to bring her children back to health, www.youtube.com/mannapack

Food For The Poor, named by The Chronicle of Philanthropy as the largest international relief and development organization in the nation, does much more than feed millions of the hungry poor in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. This interdenominational Christian ministry provides emergency relief assistance, clean water, medicines, educational materials, homes, support for orphans and the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance, with more than 95 percent of all donations going directly to programs that help the poor. For more information, please visit www.FoodForThePoor.org.