More than 4 million meals packed during 2010 Meals from the Heartland Event

More than 14,437 people from 11 states and 6 countries gathered in Central Iowa from Sept. 2 – 5 to package 4,490,640 meals for Meals from the Heartland. The event is thought to be the United State’s largest volunteer food packaging event. The meals are currently on their way to  malnourished children and families living in Haiti, Jamaica, South Africa, and New Mexico. Support will also be provided to homeless veterans, homeless shelters and food banks in Iowa.

Highlights of the event:

• Volunteers came from eleven states, including: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
• Besides the United States, six other countries were represented by volunteers. Those included: China, Egypt, Finland, Germany, Russia and Switzerland.
• More than 70 businesses, 80 churches and two-dozen area schools supported the event by contributing money, donated goods, services or other support, including sponsoring teams of volunteers to help package.
• On opening night of the event, 800 students from 21 area high schools packaged 327,888 meals during the “Student Challenge”, sponsored by Pioneer Hi-Bred.
• Volunteers also donated thousands of pounds of food for the Des Moines Area Religious Council (DMARC) food pantry.

Thanks again to everyone who helped make this event a success!

Day 2 – 2,509,056 Meals Packaged!

Day two of Meals from the Heartland, a mass meal-packaging effort by thousands of Iowa volunteers, has resulted in a total of 2,509,056 million meals for the world’s hungry. Meals from the Heartland, a volunteer-run non-profit organization, is occupying Hy-Vee Hall September 2-5 with the goal of packaging more than 4 million meals by Sunday to be shipped to poor countries around the globe.

More than 3200 volunteers flowed through Hy-Vee Hall Friday for two-hour packaging shifts. Bags of rice, soy, dried vegetables and vitamin powder were sealed and boxed for shipment to countries in need like Haiti, Africa, Jamaica and shelters within the United States.

Meals from the Heartland has held annual packaging events since 2008. This year, special vignettes were constructed to show the living conditions volunteers have witnessed when delivering meals to people in poor countries like Haiti and Africa. Also new this year are pieces of hand-made wood furniture for sale that were donated by an anonymous craftsman. All proceeds from the sale will be used to purchase ingredients for Meals from the Heartland.

Day 1 – More than 1 Million Meals Packaged!

Day one of a four-day venture of mass meal packaging by Iowans has produced 1,525,392 packaged meals on Thursday. Meals from the Heartland, a non-profit organization, is occupying Hy-Vee Hall September 2-5 for volunteers with the goal of packaging four million meals for the world’s hungry.

More than 3,000 volunteers flowed through Hy-Vee Hall for two-hour packaging shifts throughout the day. Bags of rice, soy, dried vegetables and vitamin powder were sealed and boxed for shipment to places like Haiti, Africa, Jamaica and shelters within the United States.

More than 850 high school students packed the hall in the evening to take part in the Student Challenge 2010, sponsored by Pioneer Hi-Bred. The goal was to package 285,000 meals. The students met and exceeded the goal by packaging a total of 327,888 in just two hours.

Meals from the Heartland has held annual packaging events since 2008. This year, special vignettes were constructed to show the living conditions volunteers have witnessed when delivering meals to people in poor countries like Haiti and Africa. Also new this year are pieces of hand-made wood furniture for sale that were donated by an anonymous craftsman. All proceeds from the sale will be used to purchase ingredients for Meals from the Heartland.

Your Generosity Continues To Feed Hungry Kids!

We’ve received more news from Haiti and our partners at Lifeline Christian Mission that Meals from the Heartland food packages are still helping kids in Haiti. The following is an excerpt from a recent Lifeline newsletter out of Haiti:

Food Distributions
Lifeline’s supply of food to distribute to the people in the tent cities (Relief Distribution) has now dwindled to the “Kids Food” that we receive from Kids Against Hunger, Impact Lives, Outreach International and Meals From The Heartland.  The other foods that were being shipped in have stopped coming (those from large organizations like World Food Program, etc.).

I am seeing better health in the kids that daily receive the hot meals through Lifeline, but there is no shortage of people coming to clinic who are in desperate need.  We continue to see many malnourished elderly, women, children and infants.

Thank you for your continued support of Meals from the Heartland! Without your time, donations and prayers, we wouldn’t be making such a difference!

Blessings,
The Meals from the Heartland Team

Rocking Meals for Haiti

Please join the Des Moines Blaze semi-professional football team this Saturday for a concert benefiting Meals from the Heartland!

Ricky Jimenez (@RickyDT97 on Twitter) , a Puerto Rico native and Des Moines Blaze football player, has organized the event to be held at Vaudeville Mews at 212 4th St. in downtown Des Moines. Jimenez has worked hard to coordinate the show as the cause holds a personal spot in his heart.

“I don’t want this concert to be a success, I need it to be a success,” Jimenez said. “I am doing it through my football team the Des Moines Blaze but it carries such personal weight for me. I think of the hurricanes, floods, the natural catastrophes I lived through and saw back home in Puerto Rico. I know this is exponentially larger. It makes me weep to think how many families have buried relatives and how many just lost family members and have nothing to bury.”

Doors for the concert open at 11 a.m. and admission is $15 with all proceeds going to Meals from the Heartland to help provide meals to those affected by the January earthquakes in Haiti.

The all-ages show will begin at noon and will feature local Des Moines bands including The Atudes, John Hardy, Shovel Kids, Decoy, Finn Miles, Tripp Marxx and Cashes Rivers.

Volunteers with Meals from the Heartland will also be on hand to discuss and answer questions about the effort.

You may read more about the concert at Ricky Jimenez’s blog at http://dt97.wordpress.com/ .

Making a Difference in Haiti

Thanks to you, Meals from the Heartland is making a difference in the lives of many people currently struggling in Haiti. More than two million meals were shipped to Haiti after our fall packaging event, and they are feeding people every day. I hope that you will take a minute to read the stories in the following posts to see how meals packaged by Iowans are being used to feed starving Haitians.

We are in the process of organizing a special Haiti food packaging event to be held in February. Funds are currently being raised so we can order ingredients and supplies to package and ship as much food as possible. We’ve received overwhelming response from people hoping to package meals – but please remember the amount of meals we can package depends entirely on how much money we raise to purchase ingredients. To put it into perspective: a $50 contribution will provide 300 meals, or enough food for 10 children for one month!

We will soon begin asking volunteers to sign up for packaging planned to start on February 22 at Lutheran Church of Hope in West Des Moines, and possibly other locations. Please continue to monitor our Web site for further details. If you were a team lead last fall, we may not have all of your team members’ email addresses. Please feel free to forward this post on to your teammates who helped package or friends and family to help us spread the word.

God Bless!
The Meals from the Heartland Team

Help For Haiti – Pray, Give, Serve

Help for Haiti

Our hearts are hurting for the people of Haiti. The earthquake and aftershocks have created devastation beyond our imagination. The loss of life is staggering, thousands remain unaccounted for, and hundreds of thousands need medical care, water and food.  They are at risk and in trouble, and their road to recover will be long.

Haiti is the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. It is a country of 9 million people that geographically is slightly smaller that the state of Maryland.

Nearly 2 million of the meals packaged at last fall’s Meals from the Heartland were shipped to Haiti and distributed through two partners, Lifeline Christian Ministries and Food for the Poor.

What can we do… what can you do… to provide Help for Haiti?

Please pray, give and serve as Meals from the Heartland is turning all available resources to helping the people of Haiti.

Pray:

Pray for God’s comfort and love to bless the people of Haiti, that help would quickly come from around the world to help those in need, and that He would touch each of our hearts to know what we can do to help.

We are receiving emails from those in Haiti… following are excerpts from two:

“PLEASE PRAY: So many lives lost, so much suffering, so much devastation, and so much that is hard to understand. Yet in my 20 years in Haiti, I have learned that the Haitian people are resilient and although they have not seen this kind of destruction before they will rise above it. Today’s struggle is to provide water and food for the kids and to keep ourselves strong and not allow fear or discouragement to creep in.  “

“We don’t have supplies to treat all the people…they are coming here in large numbers with broken limbs and severe wounds… a man and woman came to me and said their little boy’s arm was cut off in their home when the wall collapsed.  He is 18 months old and all he had of a right arm was a stub above the elbow.  I had to dress it and use duct tape for a pressure bandage as that is all we have and then I gave him some sleeping medicine.”

Give:

Consider giving to Meals from the Heartland or another organization that you trust. Please see links for two of our partners below, Lifeline Christian Ministries and Food for the Poor.  There are many others who are providing emergency aid, including Red Cross and the Salvation Army. It is not important where you give, but that you do.

If you choose to make a financial contribution to Meals from the Heartland, your gift will go towards the purchase of food ingredients that will be packaged and shipped to Haiti as quickly as possible (please see “Serve” below), as Meals from the Heartland is diverting all of its resources to Help for Haiti. Nearly 300,000 meals of packaged food in storage are being redirected immediately, with transportation expected via a US C-130 cargo plane scheduled for Des Moines.

Serve:

Based on contributions received between now and February 22nd, your gift will support local efforts to package food that week.  Meals from the Heartland is partnering with Lutheran Church of Hope in West Des Moines to package as much food as possible the week of February 22nd to send to Haiti. Watch for additional posts or please check backfor details on how you can sign-up to volunteer to package food.

Please remember, we are only able to package and ship food to Haiti that we purchase in advance, so your tax-deductible gift is important.

Please pray, give and serve…
Thank you!

God bless,
Meals from the Heartland Team

PS: Following are two Meals from the Heartland partner organizations who are recipients of food we have donated to Haiti… Lifeline Christian Ministries: www.Lifeline.org; Food for the Poor: www.foodforthepoor.org

Isaiah 58:10 “Feed the hungry, and help those in trouble.  Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you will be as bright as noon.”