Cornell Is…

Change. Peace. Cooperation. Hope.  This is what I saw on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Where did I see this? I attended a packing event for an organization called Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) hosted by Trinity Lutheran Church. You may be wondering, What the heck is that??? FMSC is a nonprofit based in Minnesota that provides food to children around the world who are hungry. And in case you haven’t heard yet, there are a LOT of starving kids in the world. How do they do this effectively?

The approach is simple: children and adults hand-pack meals specifically formulated for malnourished children, and we ship the meals to nearly 70 countries around the world. (http://www.fmsc.org/page.aspx?pid=453)

Children and adults hand pack meals.

There were some really cute kids. I'm sad I didn't get better pictures, but you get the idea.

At the event I attended, over the course of the weekend, hundreds of volunteers packed an excess of 233,000 meals. That’s enough food to feed a lot of kids. I volunteered as a part of the group from Cornell Christian Fellowship (CCF), but from Cornell United Religious Work, there were volunteers from 13 different chaplaincies including not only Christians groups but Jewish and Muslim as well.

My fellow CCF-ers and I rocking the hair nets.

On the weekend of 9/11.

Am I the only one that finds this fairly incredible? Honoring the anniversary of terrorism with coming together to and working for a greater greater good. It’s events like this that give me hope for a better future.

Needless to say, it was a pretty powerful experience. And I’m not going to lie, it was pretty fun too. We packed food as fast as we could while listening to obnoxious popular music.  So maybe they played a few classic songs (We Didn’t Start the Fire!) but there was definitely some Justin Beiber and Taylor Swift too. Now don’t get me wrong, I hate Justin Beiber and Taylor Swift as much as the next sensible person, but when you’re in a room with roughly 70 people and the college aged guys start belting “Love Story” at the top of their lungs…it’s quite entertaining. I honestly can’t imagine a more fun and impactful way to spend a Sunday afternoon.