Parents Join Students on Family Service Day Students at Saint Viator High School are required to spend at least 20 hours a year doing community service. On September 29, their parents got in on the act. A total of 275 volunteers --including students, parents and siblings, as well as faculty and administration --- split up into three shifts to fill food packets at the Feed My Starving Children plant in Schaumburg. “This event brought the entire Saint Viator community together,” said Betsy Fons, Campus Ministry director. “It was so successful that spaces filled within a few weeks. I had to turn away another 200 people who wanted to participate.” Volunteers worked side by side at tables to hand-pack meals specifically formulated for malnourished children. Each packet was enough to feed a family of six and contained rice, extruded soy nuggets packed with protein, vegetable flavoring that contained valuable vitamins and minerals, and dehydrated vegetables. At one table, they let out a cheer --- “Lions!” --- every time they filled a box with the maximum 36 meal packets. The volunteering families came from communities including Schaumburg, Hoffman Estates and Mount Prospect. “This is fun,” said Eileen Hafner of Mount Prospect, who worked with her freshman twins, Catherine and John. “It feels like you’re on a team.” At another table, senior Erin Nelson of Barrington worked with her mother, Sylvia, to help scoop, measure and weigh the food packets. “It’s nice to spend the day with my mom --- helping others,” Erin said. In all, they combined to fill 332 boxes of food packets --- or more than 71,000 meals --- over the course of one day, which was enough to feed nearly 200 children for an entire year. Jon Skehan, one of the team leaders from the Feed My Starving Children organization, said most of their boxes would be shipped to Swaziland, with the remainder going to Haiti. “We get lots of schools and other organizations that come to volunteer, but we love to get families,” Skehan said. “They’re the ones that return to volunteer again.” Fr. Robert M. Egan, C.S.V., president of Saint Viator, worked with one of the teams. He operated the power tool that sealed the food packets. “I’m always extremely proud of the Viator community, who reach out to people in great need,” he said. “We may not be able to change the world --- but we can do small things that will one day change the world.”