Nov. 16 Rotary meal packing event seeks volunteers

October 25, 2024  |  By Waterbury Roundabout 

The Mad River Valley Rotary’s annual event to pack meals for distribution in developing countries is looking for volunteers to help out on Saturday, Nov. 16. 

The Mad River Valley Rotary’s annual event to pack meals for distribution in developing countries is looking for volunteers to help out on Saturday, Nov. 16. 

The project begins at 10 a.m. in the Harwood Union Middle/High School cafeteria and organizers say they need approximately 80 community volunteers. 

They will assemble some 14,000 nutritious, rice-based meals that will be sent to school programs and orphanages in the developing world.

Mad River Valley Rotary collaborates with the Waterbury Rotary Club, the Harwood Interact Club, and Rise Against Hunger, a nonprofit growing a global movement to end hunger by empowering communities and responding to emergencies. 

Mad River Valley Rotarians say that food insecurity has been one of the club’s primary areas of focus this year both in the Valley and beyond. “Global hunger is a pressing problem, one that is expected to be especially severe due to the disruption of agricultural production in Ukraine, a major supplier of corn, wheat, sunflower oil and other food commodities,” they said in their announcement. 

Photo courtesy of Mad River Valley Rotary Club

An added benefit of the meals program through Rise Against Hunger is that meals delivered to schools provide an incentive for families to send their children to schoo where the donated meal may be the only meal their child receives. Encouraging school attendance helps lift the literacy rate, a key requirement for breaking the cycle of poverty.

Those interested in volunteering on Nov. 16 need to sign up. To learn more and register as a volunteer, visit mrvrotary.org. Direct any questions to Pete Colgan at mrvrotary@gmail.com.