Fill it, weigh it, seal it, count it, box it, load it, then donate it

    Community service doesn’t necessarily sound like a fun time, but the atmosphere in the old gym last Wednesday would suggest that the Holyoke High School student body learned just how enjoyable it can be.
    Grouped with their friends and classmates and wearing incredibly stylish hair nets (and beard nets), the teens packaged food to feed hungry people in their own community. The hour-long process passed quickly with the upbeat music pulsating through the gym, but the end result was huge. A total of 71 boxes of food were packed. That’s 15,336 meals.
    The food-packaging event was set in motion last year when FCCLA members Kyra Loutensock and Cash Adler led a chapter service project that aimed to raise awareness about food insecurity, while also raising money to donate meals to local food banks. To that end, they hosted the Empty Bowl Supper in January. At the meal, community members contributed $2,600 to the cause.
    Though it took some time to finalize the details of the food-packaging phase of their project, it ended up growing substantially in the process. The Holyoke FCCLA chapter ended up raising $4,465, but that’s not all. The local efforts also inspired the Northeastern Plains District of FCCLA to organize an event as well. The district chapters raised a combined $6,000, allowing over 20,000 meals to be donated in the surrounding communities.
    That’s right, a bunch of kids raised over $10,000 and packaged over 35,000 meals to feed people in need throughout northeastern Colorado.
    The two packaging events were held Oct. 17. The district event was finished in the morning at the Phillips County Event Center before the HHS portion was done that afternoon in the old gym.
    Seeing the end result of their 2017-18 chapter service project, Loutensock and Adler were both pleased to see their peers respond so positively to the task. It was clear that the students genuinely enjoyed themselves while making a difference.
    Packaging was facilitated by an organization called Something to Eat based in Kansas City, Kansas. Rows of tables were set up to form assembly lines. In each line, the first step was to fill a bag with the five ingredients that make up the cheesy rice and vegetable meal. One student held the bag at the bottom of a funnel, while five more students were each responsible for pouring the right amount of their ingredients — cheese, soy, a vitamin pack, dried veggies and rice. Each pack contains six servings of the nutritious meal.
    From there, packs went to the next station on the assembly line, where students weighed them. Rice was either added or removed to make sure each pack was a consistent weight.
    Next, the pack went to the sealing station. Once sealed, packs were counted out so that each box contained 36 packs.
    Students not stationed at an assembly line were responsible for keeping each one supplied with enough food. Every time a box was finished, a student got to hit a gong so that everyone knew how quickly progress was being made.
    By the end of the HHS packaging event, 71 boxes were stacked in a long row, creating a striking illustration of just how much food was being donated. Thirty boxes were taken to each of the food pantries in Holyoke, and the remaining boxes will be donated to a food pantry in Denver.
    Though the food packaging efforts completed in this school year were not part of an individual FCCLA project, the entire Holyoke chapter worked to make it happen.