The oak-shaded grounds of northwest Gainesville’s Trinity United Methodist Church seem a world away from poverty-stricken countries such as the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
But the Third World felt much closer to the church Monday night, when more than 50 congregation members packaged meals that Raleigh, N.C.-based charity organization Stop Hunger Now will ship overseas to feed malnourished school children in an impoverished country. Wearing plastic hair nets and lining rows of tables in a human assembly line, church members packaged 20,088 dehydrated meals – a mix of soy, chicken-flavored vitamin tablets, vegetables and rice – in approximately two hours. “If we can spend one evening to accomplish that much, it was well worth it,” said church volunteer Sally Stock. Trinity Methodist donated approximately $5,000 to Stop Hunger Now for the meals and the volunteer hours to package them, said Andrew Pridgen, the church’s director of missions. “Hopefully, this will jump-start a future event where we can do something more community-wide rather than church-wide,” Pridgen said. “Apathy is one of the major reasons we have people hungry in the world,” Brown said.
Since its formation, Stop Hunger Now has provided more than $56 million in aid and 13 million meals to more than 70 countries, according to the group’s Web site.