Our Mission: To care for the poor by providing healthy meals for undernourished people in the United States and around the world.
Our Food: Each meal is uniquely formulated vegetarian recipe that provides a rich source of easily digestible proteins, carbohydrates, and vitamins with nine essential amino acids. This combination was developed by food scientists help the undernourished recover from malnutrition. Further, given the conditions often seen in developing countries, the meals are intentionally easy to prepare, requiring only the ability to boil water. The cost for each meal is only 18 cents so a person can eat for a month for about $16.00.
Our Volunteers: The vision has always been to carry out our mission through volunteer support. We prepare each meal for shipment with the help of churches, schools, scouts, friends, and families. The assembly line meal packing process is designed to be simple so that anyone wanting to help can. Volunteers must be 11 and accompanied by an adult.
Brief History
2007 - Kids Against Hunger - Springfield was founded in December 2007. With the help of volunteers we are able to begin providing healthy meals to hungry people.
2008 - We packaged 850,000 meals. The food was used in the U.S., Haiti and Tanzania.
2009 - We packaged over 1.3 million meals. The meals were distributed to Mexico, Haiti, Jamaica and the U.S. In the U.S. The Salvation Army, The Kitchen and Rural Compassion received food for distribution in and around Springfield.
2010 - We changed our name to Friends Against Hunger. We packaged over 900,000 meals and were able to provide meals to poor people in Haiti, Mexico, El Salvador and many in the United States.
2011 - We shipped over 1 million meals to people in Haiti, Mexico, El Salvador and The United States.
2012 - We shifted our focus from small packing sessions to a large weekend Pack-A-Thon. We held our first annual Meals A Million Pack-A-Thon in November and packaged 1,000,000 meals in three days.
2013 - We packaged meals at the Springfield Exposition Center in November. We had a wonderful turnout of volunteers. With over 4,800 volunteers we packaged 1,008,000 meals. Of those meals, 366,976 remained in the U.S. The timing of our event was just following a disaster in the Philippines, we were able to provide 285,000 meals to the people suffering from the effects of the horrific storm.
2014 - Our November Pack-A-Thon was once again a huge success. Although snow and ice on Saturday and Sunday, the volunteers who were able to make it to the convention center worked hard and we packaged 1,159,000 meals. We provided 285,000 meals to survivors and victims of the Ebola Crisis in Liberia.
2015 was a rough year with Friends Against Hunger but it was a banner year in comparison to the people waiting to receive food. Once again Haiti suffered from storms and mud slides. Many hungry and starving people were waiting to receive healthy food to ensure their survival. With the help of many mid-western friends and neighbors were able to send two full containers of food to them. We also supplied food to Mexico, Liberia and The United States.
The food packaged in 2016 went to Haiti and Missouri. Locally we provided meals to the following organizations: The Springfield Mission, Fit For The Master Ministries, The Salvation Army, Webster Country Pantry, Schweitzer United Methodist Church, Hope International, St Joseph's Pantry and Crosslines.
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