Residents Cydnee Allen, from left, Karri Edgmon, Alisha Taylor, and Rick Kinkes pack rice for the annual Rise Against Hunger event at St. Jude’s Church Hall.

GLEN DALE – Saturday saw many community members join forces to pack 30,000 meals for the annual Rise Against Hunger event.

The event took place at St. Jude’s Church Hall and was sponsored in part by the Rotary Clubs of Moundsville, New Martinsville and Wheeling.

Rotary Club Area 2 Governor Larry Blalock said that the aspirational goal of the event is to eradicate hunger throughout the world.

“We are packing 30,000 meals today, which will end up in Pittsburgh in storage, and then they’ll be coupled with meals from similar packing events around the East Coast. Ultimately they will find a destination somewhere around the world where there is a hunger need. We’ll not know the destination of the meals for a couple of months, last year our meals went to Ukraine,” Blalock said. “It costs a little over $12,000 to do 30,000 meals.”

He added that in order to provide the meals, several area sponsors were needed. The event had three levels of sponsors. The bronze sponsor level, which was $250, included Altmeyer Funeral Home, Blalock Meditation Services, John Kepner, Greg and Lisa Marquart, Riesbeck’s Food Markets, Roger Warren/Remm Rentals, WesBanco, and WVU Medicine.

Silver sponsors, at a $500 donation level, were Rotary Club of New Martinsville, Rotary Club of Moundsville, Rotary Club of Wheeling, Straub, Westlake, Rabbi Joshua and Rebecca Lief, Jackson Kelly PLLC, Hartley Law Group, and Highline Warren.

Gold sponsors at the $1,000 level were Rotary District 7545, Expand Energy, Fort Henry Capital, and Christ United Methodist Church.

“Rotary has many local projects, but this would qualify as an international project, because the food more than likely will go overseas somewhere,” Blalock said. “Occasionally, when we have a disaster in the states then the food is used, it’s not exclusively international, but mostly International.”

He added that, from a community standpoint, people continue to attend the event every year.

“It’s kind of become a local event, if you will. There’s always good music, as you can hear, and people dance and clap, and it’s just a good time, a happy time,” Blalock said.

Rise Against Hunger event manager David Maurer added that the Rotary Club Area 2 and Rise Against Hunger have had a longstanding working relationship which has been beneficial.

Saturday’s event was one of 17 locations in the United States that packed meals. In addition to the 17 locations in the United States. there are also six international locations that have delivered meals to 47 different countries.

“Obviously, we’ve got to feed people meals around the world. There’s more than enough food to feed everybody in the world, but it’s not in the right places. So meal packs like these events give us the food that we need to send to places where they don’t have it,” Maurer said. “Rise Against Hunger is a little unique, because anywhere we go, we try to bring sustainability and resiliency, whether that looks like education, economics, and agriculture.”

He added that the goal of Rise Against Hunger is to get to the point where it can exit the program wherever it sends meals.

“That way we can go somewhere else and actually end world hunger instead of just giving out meals forever,” Maurer said.