Residence Hall Association makes 10,000 meals

Each year, the Residential Hall Association (RHA) lends its support to a worthy cause through philanthropic projects. This year, the RHA decided to take on a more ambitious venture and make an attempt at "starting a new tradition," said Anne Keyworth, the Head Officer for RHA.

This past week, the RHA raised $2,500 for Stop Hunger Now, a Raleigh-based non-profit organization focused on ending world hunger.

"The minimum amount to do the program was $2,500 to do 10,000 meals-each meal costing 25 cents." said Keyworth. "It's basically a mass assembly packaging event. So once you raise the money, one of the coordinators will come to your school or church or whatever organization you may be doing it with and set up a packaging event."

According to the Stop Hunger Now website, these packaging events usually require about 40 to 50 people and usually take about two hours. According to Keyworth, UNCG's event only took "about an hour and 20 minutes."

The $2,500 dollars were obtained through rigorous on campus campaigning including tables in the EUC and "Rawk sit," where a group paints the rock by the library and fundraises for the day. Individual hall councils did fundraisers as well and Alternative Spring Break (ASB), an organization that spends spring break in Washington, D.C. helping the homeless, donated $1,000 dollars for the cause.

"It was really awesome," said Keyworth of ASB, "because they made this program possible, basically."

The packaged meals focus more on providing nutrition than taste, for those people starving in countries like Haiti. "What [the food package] consists of," said Keyworth, "is rice, soy protein, dehydrated vegetables, chicken flavoring and the chicken flavoring has 21 essential vitamins. It's not very nice food; it's survival food."

As far as starting a tradition, RHA appears to have succeeded.

"It's going to be an annual event," said Keyworth. "One of the goals that we wanted to get out of it is to have all the housing staff work together for this goal because it's a lot of money. It's not easy raising $2,500 dollars…it made my relationship with the central staff and everybody stronger. It really just required all of us to work together."

For more information on "Stop Hunger Now," visit www.stophungernow.org