By Farhin Lilywala
Stop Hunger Now, a non-profit organization dedicated to ending domestic and international hunger, will partner with the college for the first time for a meal-packaging event on Sept. 27 from 10 a.m. to noon as a part of its Harvest Week.
The Center of Sustainability, Nutrition Club, Service Learning Center, and Hospitality Program have all teamed up to try and achieve their goal of packaging 2,000 meals, in an effort to end local and global hunger. Each meal costs a quarter to make; therefore, the college needs $5,000 for this event to happen and to make the biggest difference.
“Our purpose is to break the cycle of poverty and truly educate people on the face of hunger,” Kyle Galenski, Stop Hunger Now regional Project Manager, said.
This idea first began its journey two years ago when the college hosted a conference in which Stop Hunger Now challenged higher education institutions in Kansas to package one million meals to help end global poverty. Last spring, Kim Criner from the Center of Sustainability, Mary Smith, coordinator of the Service Learning Center, and Anna Page, hospitality manager, decided that a meal-packaging event is just what the college needed.
“This event is a tangible way to explore similar goals with the different organizations involved,” Criner, the main coordinator for the event, said. “People kind of get an economic and social justice aspect that is harder to grasp when the problem is not evident in that area.”
The packaged meals will go into crates, which will then be put onto ships. Once a ship has a full load, the meals can embark on the journey to their destination. The destinations vary; these meals may go to a school-feeding program, vocational training program, or even refugee camps. Many of these meals go to schools, where food is desperately needed.
“Hope and learning are difficult when you don’t know where that next meal is going to come from,” Smith said.
Therefore, these meals will hopefully convince parents to send their children to school instead of working at home, according to Page.
“Poverty needs to be addressed,” Page said. “But hunger cannot be ignored.”
For more information, visit www.jccc.edu/fight-hunger or www.stophungernow.org.
Contact Farhin Lilywala, news editor, flilywal@jccc.edu.