It's a Record Weekend for Feed My Starving Children

More than 1,400 volunteers packed 354,218 meals on Friday and Saturday.

Northfield ALC Students Help Feed Their Peers, Community

One Northfield school is working to overcome hunger in its midst.

Area Learning Center students are stocking backpacks with cookies. But rather than eating them, they’re selling them and using the proceeds to buy food that goes home with students who might otherwise go hungry. The bags are standard school backpacks. But inside is, rather than textbooks and paper, a cornucopia of easy-to-prepare food: juice, cereal, crackers, soup, peanut butter, pasta, spaghetti sauce, canned vegetables, microwaveable entrees and the like. “We’re trying to feed a family and help them out,” said Pat Parlin, director of Northfield’s Area Learning Center. The ALC is an alternative high school diploma program for students up to age 21, housed in the Longfellow School in Northfield. The backpack project began in the fall, …

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Northfield Volunteers Pack More Than 500,000 Meals for Feed My Starving Children

The packages will ship to 45 countries.

Nearly 2,000 volunteers trudged through Northfield's first major snowfall last weekend to package food at the Feed My Starving Children's MobilePack event held at St. Olaf College. In an effort orchestrated by Northfield's 5th Bridge, volunteers packaged 534,600 meals during the Nov. 12-14 event at St. Olaf's Skoglund Athletic Center. Serving in two-hour shifts, volunteers donned hairnets to fill 13.6-ounce packages with nutrient-laden chicken flavoring, dehydrated vegetables, soy protein and rice. Each package, complete with 20 essential vitamins and minerals, contains six servings of food intended for recipients in 45 countries, including Haiti, Nicaragua, Philippines and Zimbabwe. During the weekend, upbeat music was pumped throughout …

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