Save and Chng

Today I did something very meaningful and worthy. Finally I got a chance to visit FMSC center at Eagan. There were many visits paid by my colleagues and friends last year and this year, I somehow missed all those opportunities due to some other high priority appointments. Blessed was I to be a part of such activity at least today. We reached the center close to 7 P.M. People who stepped in FMSC for the first time were asked to fill in a short form providing their contact details. We were instructed to wear the plastic cap that covered our head completely. We got seated in the orientation room to hear the instruction on packing food. The organizer explained the importance of food and significance of hunger through a real time example. He displayed Omar's photo, a 8 year old malnutrition boy. He continued his explanation with the photo of the same boy after 16 days and 6 months. The audience were stunned to see the progress in the health of the boy after having the packed food sent through FMSC. Usually I believe they show a video for 30 minutes to the entire audience, as we were little shot of time, they skipped the short film. He mentioned few catchy phrases that caught every ones attention. One of which I liked the most was "You save and change some one's life through your personal effort".

We entered the packing area to hear directions on what discipline one need to follow while packing food. We were broadly divided into two groups, packing and warehousing group. The packing group was responsible for adding ingredients such as chicken powder, dehydrated vegetable mix, soy and rice into the bag, weighting, sealing and parceling the same. Warehousing team ran round to check if each group had enough food necessary for packing, they refilled the food containers and also helped to load the packed food bags/boxes back to the warehouse. Every now and then the FMSC organizers gave us an update on the number of boxes the entire group had packed. We packed continuously for about 90-100 minutes. Our packing process was expedited by the background pep songs. Everyone enjoyed the music and also the packing part.We completed our packing duration and were instructed to clean the packing table and the packing equipments. We did a quick clean up of the whole area scattered with food material.


Back to orientation room again, this time he gave us the exact quantity of food the whole team packed today. The group which completed packing most number of boxes were awarded with M&M candies. He specified about the importance of 17 cents and how our contribution would help such kids to lead a ruddy life. He talked about donation modes such as dropping cash in the donation box, buying products made by NGO's, refilling M&M candy boxes with 14 quarters and creating awareness about FMSC to large group. One core reason for this organization to be a successful one was also due to the involvement, commitment and the energy the FMSC organisers show to the volunteers. We lunged back home. I carried home an amazing experience of emphasizing others feeling and to do something for them.


For more details about this organization, please visit
http://www.fmsc.org/Page.aspx?pid=380 site