For the 9th year in a row, Waldorf College in Forest City, IA packaged Outreach meals to feed the hungry on Wednesday, March 4. This year’s event
drew 447 volunteer meal packagers from the college and the community. Their event was appropriately titled Stop Hunger. Start Hope.
Participants at this year’s event packaged a total of 71,772 meals. 18,000 of those meals were our domestic Mac and Cheese meal and 53,772 were our international Rice and Soy.
Outreach Event Coordinator Leon Sporrer said, “Waldorf College is a great place to package meals because of the energy that comes from the college students. They invite the community to join them and the mixture of young people as well as older adults shows you what the power of people working together can accomplish.”
This year’s event had an extra-special connection for one of our Outreach staff, Polly Hupfeld. Polly’s daughter, Mikayla Fisher, is a freshman at Waldorf and part of the radio show, KZOW 99.1 which did a live remote for the event.
Mikayla said, “There was a lot of enthusiastic people there packaging and they got through it very quickly! It’s nice to know some of the meals will help people close to home and others benefit people in different countries.”
Waldorf College host Pott Van Auken said, “The bulk of our volunteers come from local and area church groups and students at Waldorf College. We have an age-range from 5 to 85 years. The most satisfying thing for me, besides the tangible food that we know will go to people who need it, is what a joy it is to see young and old, friend and stranger working together and having fun doing it. People leave smiling! They have been part of something worthwhile and good! And they come back! We have many groups that come back year after year!”
For the last 7 years, the event has been a collaboration between Waldorf and Immanuel Lutheran Church here in Forest City.
For more information about having a meal-packaging event read this: Ten Easy Steps to Host a Meal Packaging Event!
641-486-2550
Follow us!
