Plenty to eat: Stop Hunger Now packaging event meets food goals
Published 7:00 am Friday, December 11, 2015
GOOD DEED: St. Paul’s member Adelene Alfano, along with other volunteers, seals meal pouches during the assembly-line process. Submitted photo.
On Dec. 2, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Goodyear Boulevard was filled to the brim with 50 church and community members who helped raise a total of $2,900 in order to package 10,000 meals for people in need during its third annual Stop Hunger Now packaging event.
Susan Burns, the church’s vestry member, said they were able to meet their goal thanks to the church’s parishioners, members of the Picayune Memorial High School National Honor Society and parishioners from St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Bogalusa, Louisiana.
During the event, volunteers formed an assembly line inside the church to measure, package and seal meals to be sent to areas devastated by natural disasters, famine or conflict.
“With a large turn-out from the community, the process was completed in less than two hours,” Burns said.
The assembly process combines soy, dehydrated vegetables, rice and a flavoring mix that includes vitamins and minerals. Each meal costs 29 cents, Burns said. Last year, volunteers from St. Paul’s and other community members assembled dried meals to be sent to the Philippines following Typhoon Haiyan. Burns said they have yet to be notified where the packaged meals are going this year.
Stop Hunger Now is an international hunger relief organization that seeks to diminish global hunger by partnering with local volunteers.
According to a press release from the church, the organization’s mission is, “To end hunger in our lifetime by providing food and life-saving aid to the world’s most vulnerable people and by creating a global commitment to mobilize the necessary resources.”
Stop Hunger Now offers 70 percent of its meals to support transformational development programs such as medical clinics and orphanages. The organization reserves 10 percent of the meals packaged to send to countries stricken with natural disaster or famine such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the ongoing Syrian conflict. The organization began in 1998 and started its meal-packaging program in 2005, according to the release.
Burns hopes to host the event again next year.
