Groups aim to fight hunger with massive meal-packaging event
Ledyard — Teams of volunteers from around the region will descend on Gales Ferry on March 25 to try to meet an ambitious goal: assembling, packaging and shipping 100,000 meals to local food pantries.
The event is organized through The Outreach Program, an Iowa-based nonprofit that arranges events to assemble nutritious meals for the hungry by enlisting teams of volunteers from local businesses, religious and civic organizations.
Fred Allyn Jr. said he was inspired by a similar event hosted at Mohegan Sun Casino, in which volunteers from United Way packaged 20,000 meals in an hour.
"One in five kids will go to bed hungry," he said. "Food insecurity is a huge problem."
He approached the Rotary Club and the St. Luke Lutheran Church in Gales Ferry about the idea, which soon grew to an all-area Rotary Club event. Rachel Albers, who works with Allyn at Allyn Realtors, took charge of the coordination and worked with the New England chapter of The Outreach Program to arrange the packaging event itself. Ledyard Middle School offered space for the event and Barnes Moving and Storage offered to aid in moving the food.
Local clubs came up with $7,500 which, combined with a district match, paid for the food: rice and beans, macaroni and cheese and pasta with tomato and basil sauce. All of the meals are enriched with soy protein to provide calories and nutrition, The Outreach Program says, and each package has six servings with a total of 2,500 calories.
Teams from Ledyard High School and the Lions Club will be participating at the event, which will last from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., as well the United Methodist Church, the town’s Jazzercise team, and a variety of other churches, businesses and local organizations in the region.
Around 500 people will be involved, Allyn said. Each team of 10 to 12 volunteers will be responsible for scooping the dry grains, weighing them and bagging them together. They expect to have some help from the submarine base in loading the boxes of meals onto trucks.
The goal is to package about 2,000 meals per hour. There will be a Mardi Gras theme and music throughout the day.
“We want it to be fun and encourage (the teams) to have friendly competition," Allyn said. "Everything that we can understand about this is that it goes quickly and is a good time."
He said he hopes the event, which is one of the largest in the state, provides a template for other Rotary Clubs to host similar events in the future.
The meals will be heading to several local food pantries, including the Gemma E. Moran United Way/Labor Food Center, the Haitian Health Foundation and the Shoreline Soup Kitchen.
Comment threads are monitored for 48 hours after publication and then closed.
