On Nov. 11 and 12, 2011 Kids Against Hunger-West Metro (KAH-WM) hosted the seventh annual pack-a-thon at the Mount Calvary Lutheran Church in Excelsior, Minnesota.
The pack-a-thon aimed at packing 350,000 meals for children in Somalia and Haiti. “We can’t abandon the kids in Haiti who rely on our food, but we also see such terrible need in Somalia, we want to send food there as well.” said Julie Kiefer, KAH-WM board chair. The meals sent to Somalia will be sent to refugee camps where Somalis go after fleeing their homes.
According to thinkquest.org, “every 3.6 seconds somebody [in the world] dies of hunger.” More than 900 volunteers were expected to take part in this pack-a-thon. Because the highly anticipated Vikings vs. Packers game is on the following Monday, participants were encouraged to wear their teams gear and go head to head to see which team can pant the most food.
“While we’re packaging these meals and saving lives, we can support our teams by wearing green or purple,” said Kiefer. The meals contain a mixture of rice, 52 percent protein soy, six blended dried vegetables, and flavoring fortified with 21 vitamins and minerals.
According to the United Nations World Food Programme, “assessments show that 3 million people [in Haiti] may need humanitarian relief, including food assistance,” as result of the earthquake that occurred there on 12 Jan. 2010. In addition, “55 percent of Haiti’s 9 million people live below the poverty line.”
“I wish we could do even more, and every year we’re trying to increase the number of meals that we pack because we want to save as many people from starvation as possible,” said KAH-WM Communications Coordinator Renee Whisnant.
Some students at Orono are putting on a similar event for their DECA project. Seniors Sophia Sodhi, Talia Zadeh and Allie Esau are re-vamping a previous DECA project that was originally done by Orono graduates Alison Golden, Amy Larson and Peter Goelz in 2009-2010.
“We wanted to do something that would make an impact on other people’s lives and for it to be more than just a DECA project,” said Golden. Their DECA project paired with the Orono Character Counts association to put on three events in order to get the entire school district involved. They plan to do a food drive at the intermediate school, the previously-done 363 sandwich making event at the middle school and an ImpactLives food packing event at the high school.
“We wanted to restart the Character Counts program and we knew we would have to do some promotion projects to keep it going,” said Esau. Although the group is not sure which country they are going to send the food to yet, they are going to get input from their advisor and send the food where it is most needed. Esau stated, “we hope to fight hunger on a local, state and international level.”
Stephanie Urness is the News Editor for The Spartan Speaks
