Jan. 17, 2008

College teams up with Kids Against Hunger

for volunteer food packaging event on Feb. 13

Morningside College is teaming up with Kids Against Hunger to provide Sioux City area residents an opportunity to help alleviate malnutrition, starvation and hunger-related diseases among children in Haiti.

On February 13, Morningside and Kids Against Hunger of Le Mars, Iowa, will host a food packaging event at the Long Lines Family Recreation Center in Sioux City from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

“Volunteers are needed in two-hour shifts to package life-saving meals that will be shipped to Haiti to help feed hungry children,” said Sandi O’Brien, director of diversity affairs at Morningside College and one of the event’s coordinators.

According to O’Brien, volunteers also will be asked to share in the expense of shipping the food to Haiti by contributing $28.

“It may seem unusual to ask volunteers to pay,” O’Brien said. “But providing much-needed food to starving children requires both time and money.”

O’Brien added that anyone who is unable to attend the February 13 event can help by providing a $28 scholarship so that someone else will be able to participate.

Individuals and groups interested in volunteering for the February 13 food packaging event in Sioux City can call Morningside College at 712-274-5123 or 712-274-5148. Volunteers will be packaging special meals that leading food scientists at Cargill, Pillsbury, General Mills and ADM developed for Kids Against Hunger. Each packaged meal provides six nutritionally-complete servings for starving children at the low cost of 23 cents per serving.

Kids Against Hunger is a nonprofit organization headquartered in New Hope, Minn. It mobilizes the energy and caring of American children, teens and adults to package and ship highly nutritious, life-saving meals to starving and malnourished children. Kids Against Hunger of Le Mars is one of the national organization’s local packaging satellites that are located across the United States and Canada.