Close to 2,000 students, staff and parents from Southern Minnesota Lutheran schools donning hairnets and a caring heart, stood side by side inside Martin Luther College, Bethany Lutheran College, and Rochester Central Lutheran School during a meal-packaging blitz on Tuesday, March 4th and Friday, March 7th. Areas in these schools temporarily morphed into an assembly line as volunteers packed 420,987 nutritionally rich meals consisting of rice, soy, vitamins, and dehydrated vegetables with Minnesota-based nonprofit, Kids Against Hunger. The event was part of Lutheran School’s Week, March 2 – 8.
Thrivent Financial for Lutherans helped organize the event and provided funding to assist with the cost of the materials and ingredients used to prepare the meals. The schools also fundraised $17,600 to assist with paying for the supplies.
Each volunteer committed to a 2 hour shift helping scoop ingredients, weigh packages, seal bags and box the rice-based meals. “It’s powerful to see a group of Lutheran students joining together here in Minnesota to pack meals that will feed other children in a different part of the world,” said Nancy Hansen, Financial Consultant of Thrivent Financial. “Thrivent Financial and our members are proud to work with local schools to provide this type of enriching and educational opportunity for our youth. Knowing that the efforts of everyone involved will bring much-needed nutritious meals to hungry children is very heartwarming.”
Thrivent Financial and Lutheran Schools in Southern Minnesota joined with Kids Against Hunger to reduce the number of starving children throughout the world and to become better informed about the problem of global hunger and how to respond to the need.
Kids Against Hunger developed a food mixture that would be easy and safe to transport, simple to make with only boiling water, and culturally acceptable worldwide. The meals are distributed in over 40 countries around the world through partnerships with humanitarian organizations.