News Feeding the world: Volunteers fill thousands of bags

More than 100 volunteers from area churches gathered at the Skate Center to spend a couple hours helping to feed people around the area and around the world last Sunday.

Marta Bauer of Bethlehem Lutheran Church organized the event. Members from Blessed Hope Church joined the project, and other area church members also participated.

"It was a fantastic event," said Marta. "We packaged 26, 000 meals in a little over an hour.  We needed 180 volunteers and about 300 people showed up.  It was great to see the community pull together and do it with such a happy giving spirit."

Of those 26,000 packages, 13,000 meals went with Outreach, Inc. to be distributed globally, most likely to Tanzania and Liberia, two of the poorest nations in the world, said Marta.  Another 13, 000 meals stayed locally: 432 meals to the local food bank in Vinton, 648 meals to Harvest Christian Fellowship in Vinton, 864 to the Belle Plaine Food Bank and 11,056 to HACAP of Eastern Iowa to be distributed via the Mobile Food Bank and 4th Street Diner.

Marta shares the story of how she got involved: 

It all started with an announcement that a couple from Union, IA were the 5,000th recipient of the Daily Point of Light Award. I was fascinated that a couple from Iowa was being recognized nationally for their volunteer service. I researched their non-profit, Outreach, Inc. and I knew I wanted to get involved. I signed up for a food packaging event last September in Marshalltown. After leaving that event, I was inspired to see if we could do something similar in Vinton. After meeting with the church council at Bethlehem Lutheran, we decided to sponsor the event and reached out to other churches in the area. Blessed Hope immediately joined us and we decided to make it a community event so that everyone in Vinton could participate. That is how Vinton Feeds the World began.