Volunteers pack 300,000 meals in Hampton for Nicaraguan orphans

The social hall at Allison Park Church along Duncan Road in Hampton looked like a manufacturing plant early Saturday, with about 800 people lined up at tables packing food.

Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” was blaring in the background while assembly lines of people worked to fill plastic bags with rice.

More than 300,000 meals in all were packed, boxed and shipped to Nicaragua to feed hungry children at ORPHANetwork, organizers of the church’s fourth annual Serve Day said.

The feat was accomplished in just seven hours.

“We weren’t able to do this last year because of the pandemic, so it feels good to get together for one cause,” said Kevin Magee of international relief group Rise Against Hunger.

His group worked with the church and local nonprofit Network of Hope to help prepare the meals.

“Not only is this a big deal because of the meal packing, but it educates people on hunger insecurity,” Magee said.

Kyler Sederwall, program director of Network of Hope, said the whopping number of meals somehow gets churned out each year with help from church members, residents, sports teams and others who turn the work into a fun event.

At 1:35 p.m., Sederwall banged a gong to alert the crowd they had reached 210,000 meals.

“If you can do 10,000 more in 10 minutes, we’ll take a break and I’ll sing a capella,” Sederwall said, to rousing applause.

Volunteers scrambled to funnel some of the 50,000 pounds of rice/protein mix into plastic bags and seal them, while others loaded boxes and transported them to a nearby truck.

The Rev. Jeff Leake, pastor, said the volunteerism never fails to inspire him.

People of all ages come together and show enthusiasm for helping strangers, he said. They also learn a lot about difficulties people face across the globe.

“We collect for this during our Easter service and we talk a lot about it throughout the year,” Leake said. “This is like the grand finale and everyone just loves it.”