Campus Community Rises Up Against Hunger
Volunteers pack more than 58,000 meals to ship to Haiti
By Mandi Semple
Rise Against Hunger is back!
After a two-and-a-half-year hiatus due to the pandemic, more than 250 members of the Carnegie Mellon community came together to package 58,536 meals in a Rise Against Hunger event on Saturday, February 19 in Wiegand Gymnasium.
Lauren Pugeda, a senior studying psychology and cognitive neuroscience in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, participated in the event as a volunteer though Partners Allied in Civic Engagement (PACE).
“I’ve participated in other PACE volunteer opportunities, but I am really excited to see all of these volunteers come out for Rise Against Hunger,” Pugeda said. “This is an important university event.”
Rise Against Hunger is a growing global movement to end hunger by empowering communities through agriculture and income-generating initiatives, nourishing lives through safety net programs and responding to emergencies through crisis relief. Rise Against Hunger is aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals — #2 for Zero Hunger — and has been supported by the Kraft Heinz Company Foundation since 2013. Carnegie Mellon became Kraft Heinz’s first collegiate partner in 2015.
The meals packaged at CMU on Saturday will be shipped to Haiti. Each meal includes enriched rice, soy protein, dried vegetables and 20 essential vitamins and nutrients.
“Similarly, along with other partnerships and initiatives like 412 Food Rescue and the CMU Pantry, CMU’s Rise Against Hunger event contributes to the university’s Sustainable Development Goals,” said Zack Miller, project administrator with the Office of Student Leadership, Involvement, and Civic Engagement (SLICE). “This event has a real impact toward the goal of ending global hunger.”
Pugeda agrees.
“The magnitude of an event like this and the number of meals packaged in just a couple of hours has tremendous impact,” she said. “We are only one community doing this but there are communities across the country also participating and adding to the impact.”
The meals packaged at CMU on Saturday will be shipped to Haiti. Each meal includes enriched rice, soy protein, dried vegetables and 20 essential vitamins and nutrients.
“I really see this as a community building event,” said PACE volunteer Nisha Fernandes, a sophomore studying business administration and statistics and decision science. “I am amazed at the turnout and love seeing our community come together for a service project of this size.”
Photos by Lake Lewis