View Screen-Reader Accessible Site

Stop Hunger Now 2012

STOP HUNGER NOW
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27TH
 
Ten Wilton faith institutions - Christian, Jewish and Muslim - will join forces to package enough meals in one day to feed over 250 starving children for a year. 
 
TO SIGNUP CLICK HERE

October 29, 2011 (in the middle of that crazy snowstorm), St. Matthew's had a huge team of volunteers participate in packaging 76,500 meals to feed 200 children. This year, on Saturday, October 27, 2012, YOU will have an opportunity to participate with nine other Wilton faith institutions in the 2nd Annual STOP HUNGER NOW all-day outreach event. A combined force of 400 volunteers from Wilton's Christian, Jewish, and Muslim institutions will be working together in shifts to get the job done. As last year's volunteers can attest, you wil have a wonderful time participating as our Wilton faith community comes together.  

The Wilton Interfaith Action Committee (WI-ACT: "We Act Together for Good"), of which St. Matthew's is a very active member, has a goal of packaging 100,00 highly nutritious meals in one day, surpassing last year's goal.  This is enough food for 250 malnourished children, most likely living in Africa, but wherever the need is most pressing, for an entire year. These meals will be served in school settings where the children can as well as eat. The highly rated nonprofit, Stop Hunger Now, Inc., will be providing the materials and equipmenta as well as the instructores on-site for the packaging operation. Teams of volunteers will gather in the Parish Hall to work in four shifts (morning, mid-day, and afternoon) to do the packaging work, using supplies of bulk ingredients and speacial packet-sealing equipment. 

Just like last year, we have committed to supply volunteers, and a computerized sign-up system for all faith communities will be in operation starting September 20th. Sign-ups will be on a first-come, first-served basis and space for each faith community's members is limited. No prior experience is needed or required! A multi-generational event, children under 13-years can accompany their parents who volunteer and young people 13 and older can volunteer on their own. There is NO childcare provided. 

Each volunteer is asked to bring a non-perishable food item for the Wilton Interfaith Food Pantry to help those in need locally. 

Reserve the date on your calendar now and think about what time shift you can join. Sign up today! 

For further information, please contact Steve Hudspeth. 

Courtesy Navigation

The 100,836 meals packaged by over 450 volunteers during the one-day program sponsored by the Wilton Interfaith Action Committee (WI-ACT) on October 27, 2012, under the supervision of the outstanding nonprofit Stop Hunger Now, Inc., are going to meet the following pressing need:  

Nearly all of the banana and plantain plants in the mountainous areas of Haiti were destroyed by a combination of heavy rains (up to 25-30 inches over three days and nights) and bursts of wind from Hurricane Sandy that blew the plants down with the subsoil already saturated from the heavy rains, causing food shortages across the area.  

The WI-ACT-packaged meals sent by SHN will be distributed by Haiti Fund, Inc. through its Comprehensive Development Project which includes watershed rehabilitation, economic development, education programs, and health initiatives that have helped to create nutritional self-sufficiency in thirty remote Haitian communities.  However, due to the recent effects of Hurricane Sandy, severe food shortages have returned to the area as those banana and plantain groves as well as bean plots and gardens - all staples of the local diet – have largely been wiped out by the storm just as the dry season approaches.  Our meals will enable the Haiti Fund to provide emergency food to those affected by this storm while these communities rebuild their gardens, plots and groves. 

While SHN’s principal relationship with Haiti Fund is for the children’s educational programs that it runs where SHN meals are regularly used, this use of our meals is to meet a special need arising for the entire communities to be helped, children and adults alike.  Under the circumstances of the Haitian community-wide devastation, WI-ACT concurred that our meals could & should be used in this way.

SHN has also advised us that it distributed over 170,000 meals packaged by other groups to those in desperate need in NYC immediately after Sandy hit there, right at the height of the crisis when SHN’s meal packages could be most useful.

One final note: as an outgrowth of our packaging of over 76,000 meals last year, one of the participants in our packaging event was so moved that he arranged for his company, RiceSelect, to do a 31,000-meal event of its own with its employees and also to supply rice needs for SHN on a donated basis, including most recently the full rice supplies (43,000 lbs.) for a 1 million meal packaging event.  So one can never tell where the experience of our event can bear great fruit elsewhere as well!

The WI-ACT Steering Committee has approved the return of this meal-packaging event next year, with another 100,000-meal goal, on October 26 th.  So, please mark your calendars accordingly!

The WI-ACT Steering Committee