Area students pack lunches to fight world hunger by Crystal Nelson
Students from Immanuel Lutheran School, area schools, church groups and additional members of the community gathered in the school's gymnasium Thursday to play their part in stamping out world hunger. For varying intervals throughout the day the groups packed enough meals to feed 34,000 people through the Kids Against Hunger Coalition.
The volunteers worked as part of eight assembly lines to pack a nutritious meal that consists of dry rice, soy, vitamins and vegetables.
Each volunteer was given a red T-shirt, apron and food safety hat to wear and was responsible for training their replacement once their time as a volunteer was complete.
Dr. Donald E. Burwell, president and CEO of the Kids Against Hunger Great Lakes Coalition, told the volunteers when they arrived the goal of the day was to have fun, make new friends and feed starving kids.
Over two and a half tons of food product went into packaging the many 13.8 ounce sealed plastic pouches Tuesday. The package of food is nutritious, serves six, is easy and safe to transport, is easy to make with boiling water and culturally acceptable worldwide.
Of the 34,000 meals packed Tuesday, 10,200 or 30 percent of them will be kept for local use, another 30 percent will be used for third world countries and the remaining 40 percent will be used world wide for disaster relief.
Immanuel Lutheran School Principal Pam White said students from the schools Kindergarten to eighth grade helped pack the meals for about an hour.
Students from St. John Lutheran School in Rogers City, students from Besser Elementary School, Alpena High School along with the AHS Key Club also participated in the service event.
"A lot of them didn't know what to expect but once they got here and started doing it, they've really been enjoying it," White said of the schools students and added that the teachers were excited have their kids do outreach.
She said the response of people who helped was great because kids from age five to senior citizens were helping with the project.
Thrivant Financial for Lutherans contributed money to fund the supplies for 20,000 meals and the additional 14,000 meals came from business' local chapter and member group, which Immanuel Lutheran School and Church are a part of along with several other churches locally.
White said a bake sale was done as a fund raiser and that the churches chapel offerings for the month of March contributed to funding supplies to make the additional 14,000 meals.
Mark Jackson, financial consultant at the Alpena Thrivent Financial for Lutheran, said the company was allocated funds to be able to put these projects on across northern Michigan and Alpena just happened to be one of the areas. Thrivent Financial For Lutherans has about nine of the Kids Against Hunger events planned so far this year.
The Kids Against Hunger Coalition is a nonprofit organization with the mission to significantly reduce the number of hungry children in the United States and to feed starving children throughout the world.
"In the last five years kids in our schools throughout Michigan and churches have packaged over 3.5 million meals," Burwell said.
In addition to the student participation in the service project, community volunteer groups included Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, Luther Manor residents and members from area churches. Thrivent Financial for Lutherans is a Fortune 500 financial services membership organization helping nearly three million members achieve their financial goals and give back to their communities.
Crystal Nelson can be reached via e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or by phone at 358-5693.
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Kids Against Hunger Great Lakes Coalition has packaged 5,132,592 meals since the fall of 2004. 1,846,152 of these were packaged in 2009. This year, 2010, KAHC volunteers have packaged 856,872 meals. Since 2004 over 43,028 volunteers have participated in KAHC packaging. KAHC has shipped over 1,000,000 meals to Haiti, through The United States Navy, Coast Guard, and other humanitarian groups. KAHC has shipped over 14,692 meals to the Dominican Republic, over 648,000 meals to Guatemala, and 108,000 to Baton Rouge, Louisiana as part of Hurricane Katrina relief effort. KAHC has sent 50,000 meals to Ghana, and 405,120 to Kenya Africa. KAHC has also shipped 200,000 meals to the following countries: Panama, Nicaragua, Columbia, Dominican Republic, Trinidad, Tobago, and French Guiana. We have shipped over 70,000 meals to Manila in the Philippine Islands. Finally KAHC has shipped over 1,655,528 meals to local community shelters & food depots in Michigan Indiana and Ohio through distribution channels like Our Lady of Fatima delivery systems.