The first thing that stood out at the Kids Against Hunger packaging event on Saturday, March 29 was the hairnets. Every participant in the Albion College Student Volunteer Bureau’s annual Kids Against Hunger event donned one of the hairnets provided, and suddenly the room became a sea of white-capped heads and unflattering hairstyles. Some laughed at the requirement, but most of the students at the event got right down to work packaging the mixture of chicken, vegetables and rice.
This year during the event, participants, including sorority and fraternity members, as well as members of SVB, managed to package over 10 thousand meals for the less fortunate. One third of those meals are going to stay right here in Albion and help out the local community. The remaining two thirds will be split nationally and globally to help those living in poverty. One meal package, once cooked, provides over six servings and 21 vitamins and minerals, according to kidsagainsthunger.org.
The packaging event, hosted in the KC stack, consisted of students bustling around, filling bags for over an hour. Students worked together in assembly lines to construct the bags and get them ready to be shipped out to malnourished children. They worked quickly, and afterwards every student stuck around to help clean up the messes left from spilled bags.
Nicole Schnabel, Hartland sophomore and the vice president of SVB, was extremely excited about this year’s event.
“We had a lot more people, because we reached out to the fraternities and sororities and some of those groups that really want to get involved in service,” Schnabel said. “And we said ‘Hey this is happening. Do you want to be a part of it?’ And they were extremely helpful.”
With the extra man-power, SVB was able to package even more meals than in previous years, and is looking to increase the number again for next year.
“Next year what we want to try to do is have it on a weekend where there are no big events so that we can package as many meals as humanly possible,” Schnabel said.
Many students who came out to the event left feeling positive about the work they’d done, especially after a hands-on project such as this. The lasting effect of the packaging event was extremely apparent, and many students were excited knowing the work happening in that room would directly benefit over 10 thousand families across the globe. Christian Schubert, Chesaning junior and the president of Sigma Nu, weighed in on the event’s success.
“Volunteering is something a lot of people don’t sign up for right away, but once they do it, they realize how much of a difference we can actually make,” Schubert said. “It makes you feel like you’re actually accomplishing something. I think it went really well, and everyone here had fun.”
Even the non-Greek community and other organizations got involved in the event. Kiley Ulrich, Farmington Hills sophomore, came to the event with a group of friends.
“I thought it was really impressive how fast everyone got things done and that when everyone came together we accomplished a lot,” Ulrich said.
The annual Kids Against Hunger packaging event was a huge success, according to SVB. Not only were the students hard at work, but they were laughing and having fun with people they might have never met before. There is one thing everyone who participated agreed was the most important: the work that they did will touch thousands of lives, and that is what it’s all about.
Photo by Emily Miller
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