Rustin High School students to prepare 10,000 meals

Students will host Rise Against Hunger for meal-packing event Saturday

Preparing 10,000 meals may sound like a daunting task. Now do it in just a few hours, and well, you’ve got yourself something that seems near impossible. Like ending world hunger.

But that’s just what a group of students from Bayard Rustin High School plan to do this Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., as they partner with Rise Against Hunger, an international hunger relief organization dedicated to ending world hunger by 2030.

Together with Rise Against Hunger, Rustin students, teachers and their families will gather in the cafeteria at Rustin High School on Saturday to prepare 10,152 meals for the hungry. The meals will be sent to schools in developing countries, helping to promote education as well.

“We’re excited to partner with Rise Against Hunger,” said Rustin senior Brigid Dolan, who helped spearhead the organization of the event. “They do incredible work in combatting world hunger and empowering communities, and we’re happy to be able to bring Rise Against Hunger to Rustin.”

That was no easy task. Dolan and members of Rustin’s Knights in Community Service club (KICS) began preparing for Saturday’s event back in August.

Their first challenge? Raising $3,000 to pay for their portion of the meals that Rise Against Hunger provides for the event: $0.29 a meal. By researching and applying for grants, the students were able to do just that. The West Chester Downtown Foundation awarded KICS a grant for $1,000 and the West Chester Education Foundation followed up with a grant for $2,000.

The KICS students have been busy the past few months working out logistics for the event and drumming up volunteers. They expect over 100 volunteers – most of them students and teachers – to attend Saturday’s meal packing event.

And with any luck, within just a few hours they’ll have 10,152 meals packed, boxed and loaded into a truck. Their destination? A world without hunger.