A desire to help hungry children led a Sioux Falls couple to start a Kids Against Hunger program.

It is a special thing that God once used a global positioning system to guide Darrel and Kathy Johnson on a zigzag ride to their destination to visit friends in Minnesota.

They plugged in the address and the GPS  guided them on a long, roundabout  trip. Along the way, they stopped for lunch at Kathy’s Café in Sacred Heart, Minn.

On the counter by the cash register, Kathy picked up the local newspaper. She immediately saw an article about Kids Against Hunger, an organization focused on preparing and delivering food packs for starving children around the world. The packs contain highly nutritious, lifesaving meals.

Darrel recently had returned from a mission trip to Haiti where he had seen children who were starving from a lack of nutritious food.

“I’ve got to do something for these kids,” Darrel said after reading the article.

So, after researching Kids Against Hunger, the Johnsons decided to start a packing satellite in Sioux Falls, S.D.

Darrel, who is a physician’s assistant at Avera McGreevy Clinic in Sioux Falls, needed a place to house and pack food for Kids Against Hunger. He went to Avera CEO Fred Sluneka and asked if there was any building space he might be able to use. Sluneka agreed to let them use the space located on the east side of the Avera Living Well Center on 33rd and Minnesota Avenue. Avera Health donates the building, heat, air conditioning, water and electricity.

The Johnsons paid $8,000 to get the start-up kit. Then they asked people from their church, Peace Lutheran in Sioux Falls, to come and learn how to be pack leaders and trainers. The Johnsons said that the volunteers had so much fun preparing food for children who would  otherwise not eat that they recruited others to help.     

“We are so blessed,” Kathy Johnson said. “We have a prime location, adequate parking and plenty of space. It is just a blessing.”

Kids Against Hunger is a nonprofit organization started by Richard Proudfit after helping people in Honduras during the aftermath of Hurricane Fifi in 1974. He was amazed at the starvation and began gathering free food that was about to expire from Pillsbury, Betty Crocker and General Mills.

He distributed the food and then worked for three years on a special food formula. His dream was to have a place where people could come and pack the food. These establishments were called satellites.

The Sioux Falls satellite for Kids Against Hunger is run by volunteers. There are no paid positions. All but one penny per meal of the dollars donated covers the cost of the food. The penny goes to the headquarters to pay for materials such as printing and information packets for others who are interested in starting a new satellite.

Volunteers of all ages package and ship the meals to starving children all over the world, including the United States. The meals are paid for — at 25 cents per meal — by those who come to pack the food.    

An assembly line of volunteers packs the food, which consists of rice, soy, vitamins, flavoring and a vegetable blend. The food offers all 19 of the essential amino acids required for complete nutrition. 

The food is prepared by adding six cups of boiling water. In the time it takes to cook the rice, the water is purified by the boiling process.

Volunteers come a few times a week to pack food. Groups come in the evenings and weekends.  Special times also can be arranged for packing during daytime hours. Volunteers who pack are asked to donate

$25 per person to help cover the cost of food. Volunteers spend up to two hours preparing the packages. Twenty-five percent of the food prepared stays in Sioux Falls and local communities for backpack programs, food banks and pantries, the Salvation Army, Faith Temple food distribution, local churches and for meals sent to Native American reservations. The majority of the other 75 percent goes for starving people in Haiti. However, special packs have and can be made for other places.

Holy Spirit Catholic Church members in Sioux Falls packed more than 100,000 meals over a weekend to send to Zambia, Africa, where they have two sisters who are missionaries for their church. Meals have also been sent to missionaries in Pakistan to aid those affected by recent devastating floods.

“We have hungry people here in South Dakota, but they are not starving like these other countries,” Darrel Johnson said. “We do this to feed the hungry around the world and keep the children from dying each day.   “Volunteering for Kids Against Hunger is such a blessing. We meet the best people. The kids are so fun. They will say, ‘Do we have to stop? This is so much fun!’”

The Johnsons welcome school children (ideally second-graders on up), sports teams, youth groups, Sunday school classes and adult groups of many kinds. Some people hold fundraisers, collect quarters or ask friends to sponsor them. They are also starting a program where people can sign up to celebrate their birthdays. They invite up to 30 friends who donate $20 (a special birthday rate) to cover the cost of the meals they pack — instead of bringing a birthday present. Each volunteer packs at least 100 meals per hour and often many more.

Every hour 12 children per minute die of starvation or from diseases related to malnutrition. There are more than 12 million hungry children in the United States alone.

“Our goal is to feed the hungry around the world and keep children from dying each day,” Darrel said. “The need is great all over the world.”

Please contact Kids Against Hunger to pack food for kids. To set up an appointment, call Darrel at (605) 759-8387 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . The web site is kidsagainsthungersiouxfalls.org; and the national website is kidsagainsthunger.org.