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Our World: Everywhere, including here
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When you talk about hunger, it seems like it’s always about someplace else. Someplace far away. Darfur, maybe. Ethiopia. Or Haiti.
DAVID ALBERS / Daily News
Not here.
But Kids Against Hunger found that hunger knows no boundaries.
“People don’t realize that there are people that are hungry right here in Southwest Florida,” says Steve Popper of the Rotary Club of Naples. He brought the Minnesota-based charity to Southwest Florida in August with a goal of producing a million meals in one year and sending them to locations around the world.
But in addition to a shipment to Jamaica and Haiti, the meals have gone to the shelves of the Collier Harvest and the Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida. The meals aren’t even leaving Collier and Lee counties, and they are way ahead of schedule.
“Within four months we will have packaged and distributed over 900,000 meals,” he says.
The group puts children and adults in assembly-line events that assemble, package and ship kits of a nutritionally balanced food requiring only six cups of boiling water. One package with the FDA label “Fortified Rice-Soy Casserole-Chicken Flavored” feeds six people for $1.38.
On Oct. 7, the Vanderbilt Presbyterian Church held a Kids Against Hunger event for the Sunday School students and church attendees. where four-year-old Nicholas Brocker, left, and 6-year-old Cole Breton sorted out the individual meal kits to be boxed for distribution. Local Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and soccer teams were also involved. Any group can plan an event.
“It tastes like chicken-flavored rice. You add a little salt to your taste and it is pretty darn good,” Popper says.
Al Brislain, executive director of the Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida, calls it “good stuff.”
“I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised,” Brislain says. My wife and I cooked some up and said, ‘Oh! This isn’t bad.’ I wanted to taste it before we gave it to the agencies, and I know a lot of the agencies we serve have come back for more. That tells me that their clients like it as well.”
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Reach David Albers at dnalbers@naplesnews.com.
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