Emmanuel Lutheran Church Teams Up With Stop Hunger Now To Package 30,000 Meals

One hundred thirty volunteers dawned hairnets Sunday afternoon at as they packaged 30,000 meals for Stop Hunger Now, a Raleigh, N.C. based international hunger relief organization.

The meals cost $.25 each, and are donated to schools and communities in third world countries throughout the world.  Greta Thiele, a member of the church, coordinated the volunteer and donation efforts, raising more than $7,000 in donations to make the event possible.

“Everybody has been really enthusiastic,” Thiele said, while taking a break from packaging meals. “They’re all asking us if we can do this again.”

At every 1,000 meals packaged, the volunteers rang a gong in the room to mark their progress.

Thiele got the idea about working with Stop Hunger Now after reading about a Lutheran church in McLean that packaged 150,000 meals in June.

“Kids as young as 5 years old came out today and gave their time,” said Carolyn Staska, a volunteer at the event. “When the community can come together like this for a great cause, everyone benefits.”

According to their website, Stop Hunger Now has donated more than $70 million in direct aid and more than 34 million meals to individuals in third world nations since 1998.They began the meal packaging program in 2005 to allow external groups, such as Emmanuel Lutheran Church, to assist in their hunger relief efforts.

“We ship 90 percent of the meals that we package to school feeding programs around the world,” said Dominick Alexander, a program manager at Stop Hunger Now’s Richmond, Va warehouse. “We target school feeding programs because statistics have shown that if you introduce a school feeding program, parents are more likely to send their children to school, as opposed to some other income generating activity like begging, becoming child prostitutes or going to the garbage dump looking for food.”

The Richmond warehouse works with groups along the Interstate 95 corridor. A week prior to the Vienna event, Alexander was in Ashburn where a total of 2,500 people packaged 290,000 meals – enough to feed an orphanage in Nicaragua with 800 orphans for one year. 

In addition to their Richmond location, Stop Hunger Now has warehouses throughout the country working with groups to do similar meal packaging events each day.

“We’re always happy to do meal packaging events, right now we’re trying to open up in Northern Virginia,” said Alexander as he loaded boxed up meals into his truck. “We have warehouses in Richmond, Lynchburg and Hampton Roads, and we have plans to expand into Northern Virginia and open up a fourth warehouse here, probably in the next three to four months.”

For more information about Stop Hunger Now, log on to their website.