Georgetown food drive sends meals around the world

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Food packaged at a Georgetown community event will travel around the world.

The event packed over 80,000 meals that will be sent to an educational facility in South Sudan. Last year, they sent about 71,000 meals to Zambia.

The Saturday, March 8, event at Sussex Central High School, was attended by around 360 volunteers.

This is the event’s third year, and the food donations are shipped abroad by Rise Against Hunger’s Philadelphia chapter. It’s an international organization that packages over 57 million meals in 2023. This annual day of giving back, “Feeding the 5,000 Multiplied,” is done with the support of numerous local churches and organizations.

It’s 40 cents per meal and about $32,000 to put it all together. Money comes from local churches and nonprofits, and meals land in schools and in rural areas.

Rise Against Hunger’s overall goal is to send over 2.7 million meals this year. The Sussex County event is a “big contributor,” according to RAH area manager Stone McDavid.

According to data from the World Health Organization, 1 in 11 people experience hunger worldwide.

“This is one small way that our Sussex County community can have an impact on that particular dynamic,” said Mike Hall, co-facilitator of the event with Judy Hall.

Being able to feed people is not the only benefit for Hall. Watching hundreds of people from different backgrounds working for the same cause gives him hope.

Mike and Judy Hall are a part of the Grace United Methodist Church in Millsboro as a member of its mission and impact team. For six years, they packed around 20,000 meals within the church. In 2022, they figured it was time to open it up to the larger community.

“Some of us come from the faith community. Some come from the business community; some from the civic community and clubs and organizations,” Mike Hall said. “We’re all here together around one purpose.”

Mike Hall said raising money is always difficult, and finding local balance between feeding global hunger and feeding people in Delaware is challenging. Half of the money raised through their church’s mission goes to assisting the Food Bank of Delaware, he said.

“People will say, ‘Well, so, so what are you doing to meet people’s needs locally?’” Hall said. “So that’s where, at least at our church, we try to balance those things as much as we possibly can.”

The process is similar to an assembly line. They use foods and vitamins including dehydrated vegetables, rice and other nonperishables that are packed before they are weighed, sealed, labeled and boxed and sent to Philadelphia, where 280,000 meals will be enough to fill a shipping container. The container is then loaded onto a ship and delivered by sea.

“This is an event where people will stand for most of three hours, but at the ceiling and the weighing stations, people can be seated and at those particular events, and then we need a few strong, strong bodies that can lift 50-pound bags of rice and soy,” Hall said.

Judy Hall said volunteers put in so much effort at these food packaging, they are worn out by the end of the day.

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“They get tapped out,” she said. “So you find yourself asking the same people, but in the back of your mind, you’re thinking, ‘Gosh, they gave so much last year. I need to find someone else.’”

The volunteers are the last people to touch the food before it is opened at their end destination.

“Everyone at this event, their hands are the last hands to touch these meals before they get to these remote areas and these school feeding programs all over the world,” McDavid said.