Thank you to all the participated at our 125,000 Meals Pack-a-Thon on July 31st. It was a tremendous success as we packed a total of 150,984 meals—25,000 more than our goal! During the Pack-a-Thon, our South Minneapolis satellite also surpassed the 1,000,000th meal packed since starting up in the Spring of 2008! It has been awesome to see and experience God doing so much through efforts of so many volunteers.

This year’s Pack-a-Thon also fulfilled the second portion of our Fill Their Plate Run event. On June 19th we had 549 people participate in the Inaugural Kids Against Hunger – Fill Their Plate 5K & 10K Runs. There were another 89 kids that participated in the 1/4 or 1/2 mile kids runs on the same day. Through our generous sponsors, that event helped raise the funds to purchase the initial 125,000 meals we packed. There were many that participated in the Run that showed up to pack the meals as well.

We’ll do it again next year, with the hope of raising even more funds to pack and ship food through the South Minneapolis Kids Against Hunger satellite.

Thanks again to all of you that helped make this possible!

The Kids Against Hunger – Fill Their Plate Run was a great success! We were so encouraged with the participation of 560 runners and walkers in the 10K and 5K events, with another 89 kids running in the ¼ mile and ½ mile events! When we planned this, we figured it would take a couple years to get it up and going where it would fund our annual 100,000 Meals Pack-a-Thon in July. Little did we know that through everyone’s participation and the generous donations of our sponsors, we would raise enough to purchase and pack 125,000 meals! It was an overwhelming success!

We’ve Raised the Funds, Now Pack the Meals!

Phase two of our Fill Their Plate Run is the Fill Their Plate 100,000 Meals Pack-a-Thon on Saturday, July 31st. (Now officially 125,000!) If you can make it, please sign up online and bring your friends, family, or anyone that would like to join us! It is a great time as we have 9 packing lines set up at one time, with some great music and a great cause. You can go directly to the Pack-a-Thon page here.

Thanks again to all who participated in the Kids Against Hunger Run! We’d love to see everyone again next year – and don’t forget to bring your family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc., etc.!

We have enough food to send a container (280,000 meals) to Haiti! See some pics of the food getting loaded.

Chad Oltman, who oversees the South Minneapolis satellite, just got back from a week in Haiti. He wanted to share some updates:

First, check out this post and this one from Lifeline Haiti. They have been distributing KAH food to people who badly need it.

And see the video below for an interview with Bob—you can see our KAH food being unloaded in the background. This food was packed at South Minneapolis!

Thanks to the outpouring of your donations, both of money and time, we have seen some amazing things happen at our two satellites:

• Over 800 volunteers at the Bloomginton satellite packed 293,000 meals over two Saturdays.
• On March 6, Hosanna Lutheran Church in Lakeville brought almost 400 people to pack 104,000 meals at South Minneapolis.
• During South Minneapolis’ normal sessions in January and February, 550 volunteers packed 94,000 meals.

All combined, that’s a total of 491,000 meals in just the first nine weeks of 2010! We want to extend a HUGE thanks to all of those who volunteered and contributed.

We also saw 570,000 meals released and distributed through Lifeline Haiti. Here’s an entry on their blog showing some pictures 90,000 meals being served.

Now Haiti is moving from just survival toward plans at rebuilding the country. With millions still homeless and in need of food, water, and shelter, your continued support is going to be critical. It will take up to ten years to rebuild Haiti—and that may just get them to where they were before the earthquake.

With this in mind, we’re pleased to announce that you can now donate online on filltheirplate.org! You can donate to either the South Minneapolis or Bloomington satellites. (We will have these links on our home page soon.) Just $20 per month will feed three children for a year. Please consider continuing to support us as we continue to feed Haiti’s starving children.

As for packing sessions, right now our schedule is almost full for March and April. This is great, no question, but it does pose the problem that those who want to make a difference in this way need to wait. So stay tuned to our volunteer page or Twitter feed as we are working on some options to set up more sessions during these next two months and beyond.

With 99 signups at South Minneapolis and 271 for the Bloomington Packathon since Wednesday, we thought the time was right to provide more opportunities for you to help Haiti. So we've decided to make a big push and try to pack 40,000 meals in a week! To do that we've opened four more sessions:

• Monday, January 18
• Tuesday, January 19
• Thursday, January 21
• Friday, January 22

If any of these dates work for you, sign up and come!

I do need to mention that buying these extra meals has used up the money we currently have for purchasing ingredients and supplies. We currently have enough ingredients to get through mid-February, but anything after that will require additional funds. Our food costs 23 cents a meal, and your contributions go directly to running the satellite and supporting the KAH home office so that they can support us! Please consider supporting our efforts to help lift Haiti out of this crisis. Thank you very much!

Wow—at this point we have had 240 people sign up to pack food in the last two days! We are very grateful for everybody who is coming together to help the nation of Haiti during this crisis.

To provide additional opportunities to pack, we have expanded all of our packing sessions to 4 packing lines, so all of our sessions can take 40 people. This will nearly double the number of volunteers that we can take on. We have also purchased ingredients for an additional 41,000 meals for the South Minneapolis satellite so that we have enough supplies for the expanded sessions.

If all these sessions fill up (and they just might), we’ll be looking to open more sessions. However, we will also need additional donations to make that happen.

Thanks again for making a difference!

Leann Pye with Joy in Hope and Bob Davisson with Lifeline Haiti have both posted updates with the latest news from their orphanages and schools. So far the buildings and people are mostly OK–Leann mentioned one of their boys has a banged-up foot and there are some cracks in their house. Still, they are very, very busy trying to manage the chaos. Follow their blogs for updates.

Also, check out Leann’s photo album showing some of the scenes from Jacmel. The pictures of the UN refugee camp are particularly saddening.

(image from Startribune.com)

You have probably heard about the devastating earthquake hit Haiti yesterday. We’re slowly getting news, but it’s clear that this disaster is even worse than the hurricanes that hit the country in 2008. It is estimated that up to 3 million people are now in need of emergency relief.

Kids Against Hunger and its satellites are mobilizing whatever they can to help out. Here is what the South Minneapolis and Bloomington sites are doing and how you can help:

• Donations are urgently needed for us to be able to buy and ship more food down there. Between our two satellites the goal for 2010 is to package 1.5 million meals. This will provide meals for 4,100 kids for a year, which would mean 91% of the students currently in the schools we support would get a meal every day. The total cost to purchase, pack, and ship these meals is $345,000. Can you please help?
• The organizations we work with also need your support during this crisis. Please consider supporting Lifeline Haiti (which runs the schools) and Joy in Hope (which runs the orphanages).
• We are working to add extra packing sessions to our schedule so more volunteers can come and pack food. Stay tuned for the dates and times of the extra sessions.
• The Bloomington satellite is holding their first 250,000 Meals Packathon on February 20 and 27. This event was planned before the earthquake, but the need for volunteers is much more urgent now.

We appreciate the work and support that all our volunteers give. Thank you for making a difference in this time of enormous need.

The World Food Programme has a great new video calling for one billion people online to help the one billion people who are hungry. Watch it below, then share it on Facebook or Twitter!