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     Over 100 Ferrum College students attending the 2007 Student Leadership Institute gathered at Phoebe Needles Wednesday, August 29 to participate in Operation Sharehouse, a volunteer, on-site mission of Stop Hunger Now. Together the students exceeded their goal and packaged 30,240 dehydrated, vitamin-fortified rice and soy based meals that will be sent to orphanages and school feeding programs in Third World countries. Stop Hunger Now is an international hunger relief agency with offices in Raleigh, North Carolina and South Hill, Virginia. The Rev. Lee Warren, Virginia Director of Stop Hunger Now, brought the event to Ferrum. Donations to the Charles R. Lambert Memorial Fund for Stop Hunger Now covered the cost of the meals packaged. Co-sponsors included the Ferrum Offices of the Dean of the Chapel, Student Leadership and Engagement, and Service Learning.

     Director of Service Learning, Dr. Susan Virginia Mead, expressed her appreciation for all involved, “I have never seen a more engaged group of students! The first year students in Ferrum's Bonner Program arrived two hours early to set up for the operation. After being trained, student leaders and staff worked diligently through a very hot two hours as they added ingredients, weighed, sealed, packed and loaded 30,240 meals to be sent abroad, most likely to Haiti. Students were excited to find out they had set a record for meals packed in that amount of time. But more importantly, they worked in unison, broke out into spontaneous song, talked about the needs in the world, and planned ways that they could organize more Operation Sharehouse events so that their friends at Ferrum and at home can be involved.”

     Student Leader Yuji Hairston says he and the others were excited about working on this project. He says there was a lot of high energy and because of that, they worked extremely fast. “Every 1,000 meals they would ring a bell.” He explained. “It seemed every five minutes we’d hear another ring.” Hairston says he especially enjoyed working with Stop Hunger Now because of its ongoing efforts to feed the hungry in crisis areas around the globe. “ I really enjoyed working with them knowing that this is an organization that doesn’t just do a project once and it never happens again. This is a continual, sustainable thing, bringing hope and making a difference in countless lives.”

     The project was part of Ferrum College’s Service Learning Program and 2007-2008 Academic Year theme, Social and Economic Justice, Regional and Global Connections. The “Stop Hunger Now” project is just one of many that will be scheduled throughout the academic year and carries out Ferrum College’s motto; “Not Self, But Others.”

     Everyday 30,000 people die of starvation and starvation-related disease. That’s one person every three seconds, a child every 15 seconds. In 2000 the United Nations adopted the Millennium Development Goals, aimed at narrowing the growing chasm between the extremely affluent and the desperately poor. Eradicating hunger is the number one goal of all nations because none of the other goals can be realized if people are hungry or poor. The second MDG is to see that every child in the world gets a primary school education. With this in mind, the United Nations has determined the most strategic way to eliminate hunger and poverty is to establish school feeding programs modeled after those in the United States. (For more about the Millennium Development Goals, go to http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals)

     Since the initiation of Operation Sharehouse in December of 2006, over 3 million meals have been sent to impoverished nations. For more information about how you can be a part of the solution to end world hunger, please visit http://www.stophungernow.orgor contact The Rev. Lee Warren at (434) 447-2568 or l.warren@stophungernow.org. For more information about service learning efforts at Ferrum College, contact Dr. Susan Virginia Mead at (540) 365-4611 or smead@ferrum.edu.

     Pictures of the event can be found at http://www.ferrum.edu/news/2007summer/makingmeals1.jpg and http://www.ferrum.edu/news/2007summer/makingmeals2.jpg

     Ferrum College is a four-year, private, co-educational, liberal arts college affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Ferrum offers a choice of nationally recognized bachelor’s degree programs at a cost well below the national average for private colleges. For more information on Ferrum, visit www.ferrum.edu.