By A.S. Kinsman

On April 13^th, 2014, over 500 volunteers from churches and non-profit organizations in Southern Maine filled the Maine Mall’s central atrium to pack meals for starving families around the world. There are approximately 870 million hungry people around the world. One in four are children under the age of five.

The first group to arrive was White Pine Community Church, who took the first 2hr shift from 10am until noon. Four other groups took 2hr shifts until 6pm, filling bags with dried vitamin powder, dried vegetables, soy, and rice in Manna packets. These ingredients are specially chosen in order to provide nutrition to families in developing countries. The packets have a relatively long shelf life due to their lack of moisture and provide enough content per package to cover six meals for a single family. By the end of the eight-hour packing day, over 100,000 meals were packaged for worldwide shipment.

Joe Campbell, pastor of White Pine Community Church, gave a brief interview while helping members of his church package meals. Wearing a light blue “Give Love Away” t-shirt and sporting a sanitary white hair net, he said, “Our whole church cancelled our service this morning and showed up here.

Just under 200 church members, about half of the entire congregation, showed up to help fight hunger. There were only so many positions available, so if there had not been a limit, there could have potentially been many more volunteers from White Pine.

A member of the church, 58-year-old David Price, gave an interview as he busily prepared and moved cardboard boxes for shipment. “If you go ahead and you just send them over things like granola bars, they really get sick on that. Their digestive systems aren’t set up for that.”

This is why simple yet nourishing meals were packaged for the starving families. The ingredients include all the essential vitamins and minerals to ensure a complete meal. The pouches cost less than fifty cents each. In fact, the meals average at twenty-two cents per pouch.

Dale Carson, the group leader of Million Meals Maine, said of the event, “For twenty-two cents a meal, I don’t think any kids should be hungry in the world. And there’s so many kids starving… You know, why can’t we do this? It’s been so encouraging to me to see so many people jump on board and just get involved. It’s just been a wild experience.”

This was Million Meals Maine first annual food-packaging event. They are already scheduling another event for next year. This time, they hope to package twice their quota, at 200,000 meals for starving children and families all around the world.