Kids Fighting Hunger is a volunteer driven organization dedicated to helping fight hunger by packaging and distributing nutritious meals to individuals, families, and communities facing food insecurity in Central Minnesota, across the United States, and around the world.
We believe that everyone regardless of age or background has the ability to make a meaningful difference in the fight against hunger. Kids Fighting Hunger was created to give people throughout Central Minnesota a hands-on opportunity to turn compassion into action.
Through partnerships with schools, sports teams, churches, businesses, scouting organizations, community groups, and individual volunteers, we bring people together to package meals and prepare them for distribution wherever the need is greatest. Whether responding to an immediate humanitarian crisis, supporting communities struggling with food insecurity, or providing assistance following a disaster, our volunteers play a direct role in getting food into the hands of people who need it most.
Every meal packaged represents more than food it represents neighbors helping neighbors, communities coming together, and people choosing to make a difference. By empowering volunteers to take an active role in the process, Kids Fighting Hunger transforms a few hours of service into thousands of meals, meaningful connections, and hope for communities both close to home and around the world.
The Kids Fighting Hunger program began March 1st, 2003 as Kids Against Hunger of Central Minnesota. A small locally based satellite of its parent organization, Feeding Children International. We are our own 501(c)(3) and operate independently of FCI.
Before long, the idea of fostering lifelong community stewardship in service to help other kids to combat starvation through humanitarian food relief became known and sought out by student leaders. More importantly, through their packaging efforts. volunteers learn and reaffirm the importance of looking beyond themselves and towards serving the needs of others.
Between 2003 and 2013 more than 20,000 youth and adults served 30,000 hours to package 15 million meals. Throughout that time an annual packaging event was often hosted by an area church to honor Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy in January. Throughout that time our focus was in our roots until the United Way reached out to see how we could provide a service opportunity to impact those in Central MN experiencing food insecurity.
We Are Thankful, a community service project began in 2013. We had partnered to offer this opportunity with area churches but branched out in 2013 to invite community members to serve at the Rivers Edge Convention Center. In 2013, a macaroni and cheese option became available and was packaged and distributed to St. Cloud food shelves. In 2014, we returned to our roots based on feedback from the food shelves, and packaged 150,000 million rice meals for humanitarian food relief. Meanwhile we continued to explore how we could make a difference in Central MN.
Check out the area Food Shelf Tab for more information. Upload photos and names of the area food shelves.
The United Way provided a list of 30 area food shelves and in 2015 we hosted our first local focused community service project to benefit our friends and neighbors. Since that time 6,000 people have served 9,000 hours to package more than 1 million oatmeal and rice meals. The Sartell Boys Swim and Dive Team and Hockey team have served as set up, heavy lifter, box maker and clean-up volunteers annually. The St. John’s University men’s golf team has been supporting this event as table captains, heavy lifters, and overall leaders since 2016 and under the leadership of the athletic department now have their own annual on campus service project for male athletes. More than 4,000 athletes have served 6,000 hours and packaged one million meals.
We distribute food all across the world. Check out the places we send food.
Thanks to the generous support of our partners. Reach out if interested in partnering.
