A multipurpose room at Delaware Valley University in Doylestown, Pennsylvania was recently transformed into a temporary food packaging center. Over four days, more than 3,000 volunteers in small teams worked two-hour shifts to prepare nearly 900,000 meals. This high-energy, productive event is known as a mobile pack, a concept created by Feed My Starving Children (FMSC), a 35-year-old organization aiming to alleviate hunger in developing countries. These pop-up factories are set up across the U.S., supplementing the work done at FMSC‘s eight permanent packing sites.

Unlike many U.S. food banks, which concentrate solely on their local communities, FMSC, Midwest Food Bank of Normal, Illinois, and Feed the Children based in Oklahoma City, extend their mission to combat global hunger. This global focus comes at a time when food insecurity is affecting around 828 million people worldwide, as per the World Food Programme. Even more distressing is the rise in people facing acute food insecurity and malnutrition, a number that tripled from 135 million in 2019 to 345 million in 2022. FMSC emphasizes that malnutrition claims the lives of 6,200 children each day, a grim reality that motivates volunteers to participate in mobile packs.

A mobile pack’s success depends on a committed host who coordinates volunteers, secures a suitable space for operations and parking for trucks, and provides funding for a minimum of 100,000 meals, each costing 24 cents. In the case of the Doylestown mobile pack, host Kevin McPoyle, President of KMRD Partners and a board member of Food Bank News, pledged $240,000 to reach a goal of one million meals. McPoyle, a veteran of several mobile packs, was confident in meeting these commitments.

The four-day event was a success, creating enough meals to provide nearly 2,500 children with a daily hot meal for a year. This contributes to FMSC‘s overall impact of delivering over 398 million meals in the past year, sufficient to feed over a million children for a year. Beyond nutrition, these meals instill hope in the recipients, a sentiment echoed by McPoyle.