Klager Kids Assemble Meals for the Hungry; Whole School District Behind the Effort

The Manchester High School Key Club organized its annual Kids Against Hunger food drive, marshaling students across all three campuses of the Manchester Community School District. Kids Against Hunger fights global hunger by having school children package nutritionally complete dry meals, costing just $.28 a meal, and shipping them to the hungriest parts of the country and the world.

Manchester kids raised $5200 and packaged over 13,000 meals on Wednesday. Each meal is composed of rice, soy, a dried vegetable blend, and a mineral/protein powder; and it can support 6 adults or 12 children. It can be quickly and easily prepared with just water, and is shelf-safe for up to three years. (Learn more about KAH food.)

The Key Club is the high school division of Kiwanis International. Mike Briggs first brought the Kids Against Hunger program to Manchester ten years ago when he advised the Key Club. Over the last decade, Manchester Schools has provided tens of thousands of meals and given our students an opportunity to fight hunger and ease suffering scoop by scoop.

Rice (white), Soy (brown), Nutritional Mix (yellow), Vegetables (red).

First graders led the charge against hunger, coming into the Klager gym at 9am to bag food.

Mallory Klein (in pink) holds the meal bag under the funnel as Hayleigh Weatherholt (in yellow) prepares a scoop of soy.

Hayleigh pours, Mallory steadies the bag, Thomas Gautz mans the veggies. Makayla Whitney (MHS Junior and Key Club member) oversees the operation.

Anna Desbrough (in teal) scoops rice, while Aubrey Lauer (in purple) has the nutritional blend.

Once the food is bagged, it goes down the line to be sealed.

Mike Briggs came back to enjoy the fruits of his idea from a decade ago.

Each meal is bagged and stacked, waiting to be boxed for shipping.

There were many assembly lines like this filling the gym, processing the food, easing hunger one scoop at a time.

Each component of the meal came from barrels like this one holding soy.

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by Fritz Swanson

Fritz Swanson has written for The Believer, the Christian Science Monitor, Print Magazine, McSweeney's, Esopus, LSA Magazine, and The Mid-American Review. He serves as a trustee on the Manchester District Library Board. He's the designer and publisher of The Manchester Mirror.

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