Community Corner

Northridge Church Feeds a Million

The Plymouth-based church gathered 5,000 volunteers to pack food into packages that will feed 1 million people in Haiti.

Members of the Plymouth-based set themselves up with a major challenge this past weekend — to pack enough food to feed 1 million people in Haiti.

But with the help of more than 5,000 people, they managed to get five trucks packed and loaded and ready to be delivered to the Caribbean country.

The church partnered with Feed My Starving Children, a Christian nonprofit group that organizes the packing and shipping of specially formulated food for hungry children in 67 countries around the world.

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The organization packs pouches full of a measured mixture of rice, soy, dehydrated vegetables and chicken flavoring. Each pouch contains six meals, and they are given by Feed My Starving Children to service organizations in each country.

Churches and other organizations can sign up to pack 100,000 to 1 million meals, and Feed My Starving Children staff members come to them to help organize and oversee the process.

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According to Sarah Danielson, a staff member with the Minnesota-based organization, Northridge is one of only three organizations that signed up to do a 1 million packing event this year.

"It's pretty rare," Danielson said. "It's really impressive that this church is taking on a million for their first-ever event."

Michael Miller, director of stewardship and outreach for the church, explained that while the church has done plenty of service events in its history, this is the biggest feat it has ever attempted.

A total of 5,000 church members participated in the packing event, which took place Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Whitmore Lake Middle School, a midway point between the church's three locations in Plymouth, and Howell.

The packing took place in 12 two-hour shifts, with 400 people packing during each shift.

Miller said that within one week of announcing the event, all the shift slots had been filled. "Even we were surprised by how quickly we got all the volunteers," he said.

On average, about 10,000 people attend Sunday services in the church's three locations, Miller said. "Engaging 5,000 of them was no small order," he added.

Feed My Starving Children also asked the congregation to donate the $190,000 — 19 cents per meal — it took to cover all the food, and church members stepped up to cover all the costs by the end of the weekend.

"The reason we wanted to do this is because so much of what we do in our daily lives is pointed at ourselves," Miller said. "This was a way for our people to give outside ourselves.

"It's also something that kids can easily do, and it makes them more aware of the fact that a lot of kids on the other side of the world don't have enough to eat."

Christiane Canfield, 25, of Livonia, a youth leader for high school students at the church, agreed.

She said an event such as this makes students in her group more conscientious of the conditions in other countries.

"They don't realize how fortunate they are to have everything that they have," she said. "But when we do something like this, they really reflect. It's a reality check for them."


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