| | Diocesan schools help
Kids Against Hunger
By KATIE LEFEBVRE, Globe
staff reporter
May 17, 2007GRANVILLE/LE
MARS - Two schools in the Diocese of Sioux City participated in Kids
Against Hunger on May 10 and 11.
Spalding
Catholic Schools in Granville participated in the  Kids
Against Hunger
Program by preparing and shipping food packets.
On
May
10, their goal was to package 100,000 food packets for hungry people.
Each packet feeds six people. The food packets will be distributed to
people in Africa and Honduras.
"Dick Seivert (of
Gehlen) put a
challenge out for us to be a part of the mission of serving those that
are less fortunate. We took it up," said Beth Bunkers, physical
education teacher and athletic director at Spalding as well as
coordinator of the Kids Against Hunger project at Spalding.
Every
bag includes rice, soy flour, salt, dextrose, dried vegetables (carrot,
onion, tomato, celery, cabbage, bell pepper) sweet dairy whey,
hydrolyzed corn protein, soybean  oil,
chicken flavoring, turmeric,
onion powder, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate and natural flavor
that provide food and nutrition for six people.
People
were
asked to pay $30 to work a two-hour shift. The $30 helps cover the cost
of the food and shipping. During the shifts people were asked to help
measure and and package the food. The work shifts were 9 to 11 a.m., 11
a.m. to 1 p.m. and 1 to 3 p.m. with about 100 people working each shift.
Grades
four through 12 at Spalding along with staff, community members and
students from St. Mary School in Remsen helped package the bags of
food. The kindergarten through third grade students made pallet cards
to signify where the food is from.
"I think we are
very blessed
and sometimes we don't realize that. Hopefully through this process we
can help them (the students) to understand that and be part of
something bigger than themselves and their community," said Bunkers.
"We
are hopefully going to help a lot of people," said Jake Heying, a
senior at Spalding who helped for two shifts doing two different jobs.
Angela
Auchstetter, a Spalding sophomore, thinks it is a great experience to
help package the food.
"I thought it was a great
idea," said Auchstetter. "It is good to help people in other countries."
Nickolas
Stoll, a seventh grader at Spalding, thinks it is good to send food to
people in Honduras and Africa because there are people starving.
Once
again this year, the students and staff of Gehlen Catholic School in Le
Mars helped to feed the children of the world on May 11.
Through
a collaborative effort with Kids Against Hunger - a component of Feed
the Children International - community volunteers, all Gehlen Catholic
students (grades kindergarten through 12) and staff prepared bags to be
shipped. A group of 53 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students from
Holy Cross School in Sioux City traveled to Gehlen to participate, as
did a group from Kuemper Catholic School in Carroll.
Beginning
at 8:30 a.m. and running until 8:30 p.m., volunteers, students and
staff worked shifts, in two-hour increments. By 4:30 p.m., they
packaged 219,000 meals. By 8:30 p.m., over 261,360 meals were packaged
and ready to be sent to Africa and Honduras.
"Months
before we
did our first one a year ago, I told the kids that most times in life
when you deal with charitable organizations you are going to write a
check or send them a $20 bill. You are never going to see it again and
you hope that it gets used properly and the way you wanted it to," said
Richard Seivert, Gehlen Catholic 7-12 guidance counselor and director
of Mission Honduras. "Kids Against Hunger is not one of those times
because each kid here pays to work a two-hour shift."
He
explained that the students buy the bags, the food, the boxes, the wrap
and so on. Therefore, students were asked to donate $20 each and adults
$30 each.
"At the end of the day, they own the
food and
actually make the decision to help us figure out where it is going to
go," said Seivert.
Individuals who were unable to
help with the
packaging event were asked to adopt-a-student for $20 to help families
who are struggling.
Gehlen junior, Kevin
Shea, noted there are so many people around the world that need the
food they packaged.
"It
is just a small thing we can do to help them out," said Shea. "I think
it is really cool how our whole school can come together to do this.
Here in America we take for granted everything we have and other
countries around the world are happy to get this little amount of food."
Tiffany
Sitzmann, a junior at Gehlen, commented that it is good to be involved
because they are helping feed a lot of people who may not get any food
normally.
"I think it is important because you are
saving lives,
saving little kids from dying of starvation everyday," said Sitzmann.
"We are saving millions of kids from going through that."
Mary
Jayne Mousel, head teacher at Holy Cross in Sioux City, mentioned that
she thought this would be a good service project for the students.
"Service
is a really important Gospel value for all of us," said Mousel. "In our
Catholic schools we try to emphasize the need to reach out to other
people."
Jamie Ramirez, sixth grader at Holy Cross
in Sioux
City, pointed out that it is good to help with this project because
"you actually get to help them."
"If you just give
them money,
it is like one month later you forget about them," said Ramirez. "With
this, you get to work for it - you actually get to save someone's life
by helping them." |
