A food packaging event will be taking place on November 4th in Marietta. The goal this year is set at 100,000 meals for Washington County food pantries. WMOA News spoke with Stacy Steed with the Washington County Homeless Project and she tells us more about this goal.
"We work with a non-profit from Union, Iowa. They're called the "Outreach Program", and they sponsor these food packaging events all over the country and really the world. And basically, they have it down to such a science that we're going to be able to do 100,000 meals and package these dry meals in just two hours."
Last year was a large success as 50,000 meals were packaged at Marietta High School and Steed tells us more about the mission of the project.
"One of the main missions in this food packaging event is really just helping the community understand what a need there is for our food pantries, and that there are almost 9,000 people in our community that actually don't know where their next meal is going to come from. The food pantries last year were so excited that we did this, and I think a lot of people in the community saw what a great gift it was."
Twice as many meals for 2017 will certainly take up more space this year so they have decided to move out of Marietta High School and take it somewhere a little bigger.
"I was able to contact the owner of the former Food 4 Less building and he said "Absolutely!" So we have the best space ever thanks to him. Everything's empty. Every poll in the building has electricity which is amazing because to package these meals, there's a heat sealer so we need space. We need all of these things, and it's just a perfect spot."
Twenty-five sponsors and 300 community volunteers are ready to roll on the food packaging project set to take place on November 4th.
