TU Football Feeds Children
Tulsa Golden Hurricane football players and coaches participated in the Feed My Starving Children program by packing 34,128 meals that will go to feed 94 children for a year.
Feed My Starving Children is a non-profit Christian organization committed to feeding God’s children hungry in body and spirit. The approach is simple: children and adults hand-pack meals specifically formulated for malnourished children, and those meals are shipped to nearly 70 countries around the world.
The University of Tulsa football program has been involved in packing meals for the last three years.
“Essentially Feed My Starving Children is a group that packs food to work with other organizations in 70 countries across the world. It’s a relief organization,” says Tulsa Head Coach Bill Blankenship. “The numbers amazingly have been impacted, but it’s still awful. All of the UNICEF numbers they give us show that around 6,200 children are dying every day from starvation, so there are people worldwide trying to make an impact to help reduce that number. Feed my Starving Children has come up with a formula –– where we pack of rice, vitamins and vegetables.”
“ Feed My Starving Children is a national program that goes into local areas. They help purchase the bulk items and we serve as the packing center, they call it a mobile packing experience,” adds Blankenship.
The Hurricane football team recently convened at the local packing center at Liberty Church (77th & Garnett) to pack meals. “In a two-hour block of time, we were a part of packing more than 34,000 meals, which they tell us will feed 94 children for a year. Worldwide it’s not a huge impact, but for those 94 real kids it’s a big deal,” says Blankenship.
“A lot of the major relief organizations utilize Feed My Starving Children to provide their food that they distribute,” he says. “Last year, most of the food we packed went to Haiti. This year, it’s my understanding that all what we did was going into Kenya. There are affiliations in 70 countries, but they do like to make it personal, so they’ll let us know exactly what group we’re packing for.”
Blankenship knows the importance of the Golden Hurricane football team giving back.
“Our guys need to give back and they want to,” says Blankenship. “They challenge me, because these are guys that are really involved in the community. They love being involved with community functions, whether we’re working with kids that need help, or involved with this type of organization where we say let’s go help be a part of providing some kids who don’t get to eat, the opportunity to eat.”
Blankenship plans for Tulsa football to continue helping Feed My Starving Children and hopes that sometime in the near future a packing center can take place on the TU campus.
“One thing I’m dreaming about is being able to have a mobile packing event right here on our campus. I think we’d be able to set up an event where we involved the entire university. Liberty Church has been the beginning point for this in our community and there have been some other satellite locations that have begun. We believe we’d be able to pack two million meals a year,” says Blankenship.
Updated 06-02-2013
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