Bangor - Volunteers gathered at the old Circuit City building in Bangor on Saturday because it takes a lot of helping hands and a significant chunk of time to prepare 100,000 meals.

"500 volunteers and we have 3 two-hour sessions so in six hours you're packing 100,000 meals," said Beverly Kostusyk, who worked to organize the event.

It took 18 months and a lot of fundraising to make this massive mobile packing event for Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) possible. Members of the Nealley's Corner Church in Hampden got the community involved.

"We were able to contact a number of different churches and organizations and have them collect quarters in these M&M tubes and they started adding up in order to get the funds we needed to do this," said Kostusyk.

It all came together to make this day possible.

Volunteers formed an assembly line creating meals that will be distributed by Global Aid Network (GAIN) to starving children around the world.

"You can put the food in, pack the food, and you know that the next person to touch the food will be a starving child," said Joe Kostusyk.

"It's very fulfilling to know that you can make a difference in a country that is nowhere near as blessed as we are," said volunteer Stephanie Dow of Bangor.

And while they're working on feeding starving kids globally, they know there's hungry people here in Maine, so they're also helping out Manna Ministries.

"Manna is a great ministry, Bill Rae gave us a truck to fill up and we're going to try to fill it up today with the help of the general public and all 500 volunteers who came in today all brought canned goods and non-perishables for them," said Kevin Martin, a member of the event committee and volunteer.

Individually these volunteers didn't do all that much, but they were able to make a big difference.

"Collectively a lot of people doing a little bit each adds up to a whole bunch at the other end," said Martin.

Meantime, they're already working on doubling the effort next year, making it a two day event where they'll pack 200,000 meals.

Print this Story