When you picture your business trips, does this sound familiar? A 72-hour sprint, dominated by airport terminals, rental cars, hotel lobbies, and continental breakfasts. If you are lucky, you can squeeze in time to go to that restaurant you read all about in the airplane’s magazine.
But sometimes on these trips, you are able to do something memorable, fulfilling and out-of-the-box. Fortunately enough for us, we were able to have one of those awesome experiences recently.
Earlier this month, members of our Central Business Development and Finance teams met in Minnesota (where I live and work) for training, sales process discussions, account reviews and discussion around how best to serve our customers. I loved the chance to host my Creation team. We took advantage of the beautiful Minnesota summer and enjoyed some outdoor meals together in downtown St. Paul and along the river in historic Stillwater.
While our meetings were productive, the highlight of our trip was spending a morning volunteering at Feed My Starving Children (FMSC). FMSC is a non-profit organization empowering volunteers to pack meals for the malnourished in 70 countries.
We had done some research on the organization and were impressed with their efficiency and ability to make an impact. At FMSC, 92% of the funds raised go towards meals, and in 30 years of operation, over 99% of meals have been received by the intended recipients – many of whom are located in extremely remote areas across the globe.
When you look at FMSC’s stats, it is easy to appreciate this extraordinary, organized organization.
In our morning at FMSC’s Eagan location, together with other volunteers, we packed 22,000 meals.
I had an incredible time.
We got to work as a team, provide genuine benefit for those in need, and tap into our competitive nature by raising funds to pay for the raw materials for the meals we packed. If you’d like to donate to FMSC too, you can do so through their website or through our Creation donation page which is still active from our packing event.
The day was also an opportunity to meet remarkable people like Christy, who helped coordinate the 80 of us who volunteered that morning, and Christy (a happy coincidence!) who manages mobile packing events around the country. She told us a heartwarming story about an exchange student she met at an event in Washington, DC, the week prior.
The young woman grew up in Haiti and attended a large FMSC event to pack meals with her host family and hundreds of others. The student was emotional as she told Christy that as a girl in Haiti, she grew up eating the meals provided by FMSC, but never knew who supplied them or that they were packed manually by the loving hands of volunteers. She was surprised when she recognized the familiar FMSC labels on the meals and felt blessed to be able to pack them herself to help feed others around the world.
Hearing stories like this one, I guarantee this won’t be the last time we partner with FMSC.
I love every chance I get to spend quality time with my Creation team. I really enjoyed this week of getting to know each other better, finding new ways to delight our customers, and having the chance to end on such an amazing note with FMSC.
