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What is a Hunger Challenge?
A Hunger Challenge is a large event, held on-site in your community, where many volunteers work together in two-hour shifts to assemble packages of dehydrated food to send to starving children and families. We bring all of the equipment and materials to your school, church or other large building and ship it out directly from there.
How do you respond to people who say we should feed the hungry in our own community or country before we send food overseas?
While we don’t deny that there are people in the United States who are hungry and don’t get sufficient nutrition – especially children who are dependent on someone else to provide for them – there are safety nets in place here in the form of government aid and community food banks.
People don’t starve to death in the United States. In some places where we send food, children eat only a small portion of food two or three times a week. Our mission is to send food to places where people are starving and/or significantly malnourished.
How much food can we package?
Our goal is to package at least one shipping container during a Hunger Challenge event. A 20-foot shipping container can hold 660 boxes for a total 142,560 meals. A 40-foot shipping container will hold as many as 1,320 boxes, for a total of 285,120 meals. (What is a shipping container?) Each individual registers for a specific two-hour time slot and pays $65 to cover the cost of the food ingredients he will package during that time. Each assembly line group of 12 people will package 12 boxes of food during the two-hour time period. Therefore, each person packages one box of food – 216 meals – during his time slot. If you have 1,000 volunteers, you will assemble 1,000 boxes and provide 216,000 meals.
How does the assembly process work?
Depending on the size of your facility, we will set up six to ten assembly lines of 12 people each to package the food. Each person has a specific job
• Pour the ingredients through a funnel into a plastic bag
(6 people)
• Weigh the bags (3 people)
• Seal the bags (2 people)
• Count the bags and pack them into boxes (1 person)
What food ingredients do you use?
See our webpage with a detailed description about our food.
What type of facility is needed?
A gymnasium, fellowship hall, or other large room works well for a Hunger Challenge. We will ship some of the ingredients to your location ahead of time, so you will need a place to store the material for up to two weeks before the event. It is ideal to have a loading dock, but not imperative. We also need a separate room for orientation meetings. This room needs space to seat 72 to 120 people, depending on the number of assembly lines you would be using.
Where does the food go?
We ship this nutritious food directly to Christian missionary partners that we know and trust in key parts of the world. Oftentimes, these missionaries operate orphanages, schools, feeding programs, or other emergency relief stations. The food is always distributed freely in the name of Jesus Christ..
How does a Hunger Challenge affect my community?
Hosting a Hunger Challenge will help you challenge your church and/or community to put their faith into action. In a very personal, practical, and tangible way, you can play a significant part in feeding people who are starving.
A Hunger Challenge also has the potential to pull together Christian believers and other concerned citizens from a community to fulfill a common mission – to feed starving children – and to get to know each other in the process. It has been encouraging in several communities to see different denominations work together that might not usually interact with each other.
Why do we need to raise the money ahead of time?
Heaven Sent Ministries is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that operates on very little overhead and a very slim cash flow. We simply cannot order the thousands of pounds of food ingredients and packaging supplies needed for a Hunger Challenge without having the cash in hand to pay our vendors. For that reason, eight weeks prior to the event, 80% of the necessary funds must be raised and paid to HSM. Most of our vendors require at least four to six weeks’ notice to ship the large volume of products we require for a Hunger Challenge.
How does your Gift Card work as a fundraiser?
We offer a fundraising tool to each of our Hunger Challenge teams that is a small greeting card with the following message:
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Did you know? You’ve helped feed starving children.
In lieu of a traditional gift, a box of life-giving food has been given to a starving family in your name by ____________________________.
Each box contains 216 life-sustaining meals made up of rice, soy, dehydrated vegetables, and 21 essential vitamins – and costs just $65.
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[Image of greeting card coming soon]
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The card includes a tiny sample plastic package of our food product.
If you are raising funds and registering participants during the Thanksgiving or Christmas season, this Gift Card is an alternative gift that people can purchase for the “person who already has everything.”
Your team has the option of utilizing these Gift Cards as a component of its fundraising plan.
For more information about hosting a Hunger Challenge event, contact Lynda,
our Hunger Challenge Director, by phone: (887) 525-4476 or by email
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