Times are tough right now, and people need help more than ever with the basic necessities.
Of course, St. Vincent de Paul offers numerous resources for people in need and local chapters are located all over the country. Go to https://ssvpusa.org/assistance-services/
The main site, www.findhelp.org, looks terrific. It offers every kind of help you can imagine.
Local churches and communities also offer aid. For example, if you live in Phoenix, Paz de Cristo https://pazdecristo.org/ offers not only food, clothing and hot showers but other assistance.
The video above tells the remarkable story of an organization that emerged from one man’s desire to save the lives of little children and God’s help in making his dream come true. He established an organization called Feed My Starving Children www.fmsc.org , which is dedicated to doing just that —feeding starving children around the world!
You can be a part of that dream. Volunteers are the lifeblood of this organization, and there are centers located in many places including in Arizona, Illinois, Texas and all over the United States.
And volunteering at FMSC is sooooo much fun!!
The first time I volunteered there at a center in Arizona, I did not do it out of the goodness of my heart but because my son needed community service hours for his school. But I soon discovered that volunteering at Feed My Starving Children was not only the absolute best, most organized and easiest way for my son to fulfill his community service requirements, but that it was also an incredibly enjoyable experience.
If you decide to go, here is what to expect:
You arrive at the center and are given a quick tutorial on what the organization is about and what “job” you will be working for the next hour or two. Then you are assigned to a task—scooping rice or soy or vegetable powder etc. into a bag, weighing it and packing it to get it ready to send off to children of other countries (often countries that have just experienced a disaster or other calamity). About 4 or 5 of you will stand around a table, manning your stations (1 weighs & packs, 1 is assigned to scoop the rice and so forth) and you will then have a lot of fun working together with the others at your table and often laughing and talking with each other as you assemble the ingredients into bags. Upbeat music plays in the background, and the many tables of volunteers compete with each other within their teams to win a contest by packing the most bags in a certain period of time.
There’s this incredible sense of camaraderie and happiness among the volunteers. It’s such a fun experience that often people sign up together as a group and sometimes even wear t-shirts with the name of their team! Families or church groups or even friends get together to pack the food. The event would make a fun outing with family, friends, or even on a date (you know the person going with you is probably a keeper) :-). At the end of your volunteer session, you are all invited (if you want to), to pray over the many food boxes that will be sent to those who desperately need them.
You will be told how many boxes your group packed during your session and will later receive an email when the boxes arrive to the country. You will be told how many people you fed, and the number is always more than you expect. You can’t help but be happy when you get that email!
For those who need community service hours, they will receive a certificate with their name on it for the time spent volunteering. FMSC keeps a record of the number of hours spent in case they forget when it’s time to report how much community service they did! Believe me, that is quite helpful!
If you have a Feed My Starving Children center in your area, I promise you it will be worth your while to visit and volunteer. If you don’t, you can go to www.fmsc.org to learn about other ways that you can help.
I LOVE this portrait of St. Vincent de Paul! Look at how kind his eyes are!
I see a sweet, humble man when I look at him. I know that if I passed him on the street, I would not pay much attention to him. I would get the impression that he was just a kindly old man—a weak old man, even, who probably didn’t do much with his life.
Yet nestled beneath those kind eyes was a very great man with a huge heart who did remarkable things with his life, a man who loved God deeply and whose love of God prompted him to love others generously and in extraordinary ways.
St. Vincent de Paul was a 16th century priest who lived an absolutely remarkable life* hallmarked by service to the poor. Just one of the many organizations founded in his name, The St. Vincent de Paul Society, today offers food, shelter and financial assistance to millions of people around the world.
Born to French peasants in 1581, Vincent was later captured by pirates and sold into slavery, in bondage for over 2 years. In his lifetime he served as chaplain for royalty, established hospitals and charitable organizations, taught and preached everywhere, was a prolific writer and tireless worker, reformed the clergy and founded religious orders that are still today focused on the needs of the poor, He was 80 years old when he died in Paris on 9/27/1660.
He was an amazing person, this saint with the kind, humble eyes.
