A Million Meals for Haiti

A couple of weeks ago, I heard about this thing that the Salvation Army was doing in Champaign. The concept was pretty simple: A Million Meals for Haiti. The process was equally simple: Numana, Inc. had come up with a simple recipe that would provide basic nutrients for people in famine-like conditions. The Salvation Army and Numana would get the raw materials. Volunteers would make the finished product. The Salvation Army would get the meals delivered to Haiti by the end of the next week.

The meals would be packaged in bags that would contain six meals. Each package consisted of (approximately) a cup of ground soybeans, a cup of freeze-dried pinto beans, a teaspoon of multivitamins (powdered), and a cup of rice. (I am not sure of the exact measurements, but it was something like what I have stated.) Add six cups of water and you have enough food for six people for one meal. To prepare the dried goods, we were to form an assembly line with a team of 10-12 people who would package the meals, seal the bags, and box them up. Each team would work a two-hour shift. The entire event was scheduled to cover two days, with anywhere from 600-800 volunteers per shift.

This was the first time that Numana, Inc. and the Salvation Army tried a project of this size in a community as small as Champaign-Urbana. At the same time volunteers were working in Champaign, other volunteers would be working in San Francisco. It was a challenge of new proportions for our community, and I am pleased to say that Champaign-Urbana rose to the challenge. Word came to all of the local churches, and we heard about it. Someone sent an invite on facebook. I asked Gretchen if she wanted to volunteer, and she agreed. We registered online and planned on spending a couple of hours doing something. We weren't quite sure what we would be doing, but we were certain it'd be worthwhile.

We arrived on site and found a parking lot packed with cars, and people lined up outside, waiting to sign in and get to work. Once inside, we saw some friends of ours and we joined forces. We were given a quick training, and we took our stations. Phil would hold the empty packages. Jeremy would measure out the ground soybeans, Alan would measure out the pinto beans, I would measure out the vitamins, and Bob would measure of the rice. Phil would then put the package in a queue for weighing and quality control, being handled by Gretchen and Jane. Once the packages met the required weight, they were passed on to Becky and Odemaris, who sealed the bags. Jeff and Mary made sure the bags were properly sealed and airtight, and then two others girls (whose names I do not know) placed them in the boxes. Eleven packages to a small box. Four small boxes to a large box. Twenty-one total large boxes in a two-hour shift (our goal was twenty-three). 5,544 total meals packaged by our group. That was approximately 47 meals a minute.

The goal for the entire weekend was to provide 1,000,000 meals to be sent to Haiti to relieve the suffering of those still recovering from the devastating earthquake. By Saturday night, the Champaign volunteer corps had turned out 880,000 meals. I don't know how many meals were prepared in San Francisco, but I like to think that those of us working in Champaign totally surpassed those on the West Coast.