Stop Hunger Now event - May 30, 2014

Falls Church Rotarians volunteered on Saturday, May 30, 2014 at the Stop Hunger Now packaging event, hosted by fellow Rotary Clubs: Annandale (lead), Bailey's Crossroads, and Burke. The event was held at the Annandale United Methodist Church on Columbia Pike.  Scores of volunteers -- young and old -- from various community groups participated to package thousands of meals to be shipped overseas to feed hungry people.

Club members participating included: President Diane Hill, New Generations Chair Erica Brouillette and fiance Kevin, and new Rotarian Maakor Quarmyne.

About www.StopHungerNow.org:

Stop Hunger Now is an international hunger relief agency that has been fulfilling its commitment to end hunger for more than 15 years. Since 1998, the organization has coordinated the distribution of food and other lifesaving aid to children and families in countries all over the world.

Stop Hunger Now created its meal packaging program, in 2005. The program perfected the assembly process that combines rice, soy, dehydrated vegetables and a flavoring mix including 21 essential vitamins and minerals into small meal packets. Each meal costs only 29 cents. The food stores easily, has a shelf-life of two years and transports quickly. Stop Hunger Now works with international partners that ship and distribute the meals in-country.

The packaging operation is mobile enough to go wherever volunteers are located, and can be adapted to accommodate as few as 25 and as many as 500 volunteers at a time. One SHN packaging event can result in the packaging of more than 1,000,000 meals. The use of volunteers for product packaging has resulted in an extremely cost-effective operation while, at the same time, increasing awareness of global hunger and food insecurity issues across the world.

Stop Hunger Now provides over 70% of its meals to support transformational development programs such as school feeding programs, vocational training programs, early childhood development programs, orphanages, and medical clinics.  Working with these programs helps enhance lives by giving beneficiaries the opportunity to break the cycle of poverty through education,  skills development, and health care while also receiving much needed nutrition.  Stop Hunger Now’s goal is to allocate 80% of its meals to transformational development programs by 2015.