Students Pack 25,000 Meals for Community Food Banks

SUNY Oneonta's Hunt Union Ballroom was transformed into a high-energy assembly line of beans, rice, spices, bags and recipe cards on Saturday, Sept. 7, as more than 50 student volunteers packed 25,602 meals to be donated to 22 Otsego County food banks.

The students' efforts are part of a larger goal organized by 9/11 Day, a national nonprofit that founded the federally recognized September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance. With grant funding from AmeriCorps, 9/11 Day is supporting service activities for college-age students. SUNY Oneonta is one of 11 college campuses across the country working together to pack nearly 1 million nonperishable meal kits for those in need in their local communities.

"It's been an awesome privilege to be a part of this," said Samuel Cox, Operations Manager for the Pack Shack, an organization that partnered with 9/11 Day to work with college students across the country on the meal-packing project.

The Pack Shack sent SUNY Oneonta a sampling of the pre-packaged meals ahead of time, and staff from Sodexo (the university's dining service provider) cooked up a tray of the meals so that at the end of the event, the volunteers got to taste the meal they were packing.

SUNY Oneonta's service day was led by the university's Center for Volunteerism and Community Engagement, which organizes large community service events and connects students with service learning and volunteer opportunities in the region throughout the year.

"By the end of the day, we will have packed 123 boxes of meals to distribute to people in need in our community through the Otsego County Hunger Coalition," said Linda Drake, Executive Director of the CVCE. "This is the first time we have done a project like this, and it's been a wonderful experience seeing so many students having fun while supporting a great cause."

Over the past 23 years, the 9/11 Day nonprofit has transformed the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks into the largest annual day of service in American history, now recognized under federal law. The mission of 9/11 Day is to inspire millions of Americans to rekindle the spirit of unity and compassion that arose in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and to encourage good deeds and other acts of service in tribute to the 9/11 victims, survivors, first responders and members of the military who rose in service in response to the attacks.