Volunteers needed for food-packing event

Two hours of your life can translate into hundreds of meals for malnourished people around the world.

Gehlen Catholic School is seeking volunteers and sponsors for this year's Kids Against Hunger food-packaging project, planned for Friday, May 9.

Volunteers will work alongside students and staff to pack, weigh and seal bags of dried rice and protein meals which will be shipped overseas, mainly to Honduras.

The goal for the day is to pack 200,000 meals, according to Richard Seivert, the coordinator of the Gehlen chapter of Kids Against Hunger.

The assembly line style event starts at 8:30 a.m. and runs for 12 hours, and volunteers can serve a two-hour shift. Each volunteer is also asked to contribute $30 to the event. Students contribute $27 each.

"If a person would love to work but can't because of work or their age, they can adopt a student or a class," Seivert said.

Their donation could cover the student's contribution, especially for families with more than one child, he explained.

The Gehlen Kids Against Hunger annual event started three years ago. Now it has grown to include six other communities.

Already this spring, Kuemper Catholic School in Caroll hosted a Kids Against Hunger event, packing 494,000 meals. Holy Cross and Heelan schools in Sioux City hosted an event this week, and St. Mary's Church of Hawarden is hosting one on April 30. Pocahontas is planning a May 7 event, and Spalding Catholic School of Granville is planning a joint event with Remsen St. Mary's School on May 8, the day before Gehlen's event.

The ultimate goal is to pack 1 million meals total.

The Gehlen event, along with the others, will be supplied by Kids Against Hunger Le Mars, a non-denominational organization with a warehouse in Le Mars where ingredients for the meals are stored and people can volunteer to pack meals. Al Vonnahme is the president of Kids Against Hunger Le Mars.