posted on Friday, July 17, 2015 in Central Region News
1 billion people worldwide live in chronic hunger. That is equivalent to the populations of North America and Europe combined. Hunger and malnutrition is the number one risk to health worldwide – greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. Poor nutrition plays a role in at least half of the 7.6 million child deaths each year.
Meals from the Heartland is a non-profit, 501(c) 3 organization that saw those alarming statistics and decided to take action. The inspiration for Meals from the Heartland effort began with a 2007 food packaging event held during Lent by a church in West Des Moines, Iowa. From the success of that event, more volunteers came about to feed the hungry and it became a year-round meal packaging effort.
Meals from the Heartland food packages contain rice, textured soy protein, dried vegetables and vitamins. The meals were formulated to be very nutritional and to be accepted by many cultures around the world. The meal package contains rice, soy protein, vitamin powder and dried vegetables. Each meal package feeds up to six people and costs just $1.20. Meals are prepared by cooking in boiling water for 20 minutes.
AMVC joined forces with local churches and businesses to aid in sponsoring a Meals from the Heartland meal packaging event. The original goal for the event was to package at least 60,000 meals, and on Friday, March 15th, 2013 we met and surpassed that goal packaging more than 115,000 meals. In order to package all of those meals over $22,000 in funds were raised by Audubon County residents and local businesses. Over 500 volunteers packaged meals on Friday with 20 overseers that spent the day making sure teams could stay busy packing by refilling their supplies and answering any questions. AMVC’s very own, Dean Packard was one of the overseers and instigators for this event. AMVC employees and their families from the management office, veterinary clinics, as well as swine facilities decided to lend a helping hand and package meals. Students from the Audubon High School and Elk-Horn Exira High School spent some of their school day packaging meals.
A huge thank you to AMVC and their partners for helping make this event such a huge success. For more information on Meals from the Heartland check out their website at http://mealsfromtheheartland.org/.