On Monday, Jan. 18, in Shenandoah County, one group of people decided to take their day off and volunteer in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. so that children would have food during the weekends this year.

Volunteers lined up in the cafeteria of Stonewall Jackson High School, wearing plastic gloves and hair nets, to package beans, rice and apples.

Children worked right alongside adults and together they put together 5,000 packages to help feed people in their county through two local ministries, the Loaves and Fishes Food Pantry and Luke’s Backpack.

“It was really something to see,” said Carolyn Long, a volunteer from Luke’s Backpack and a member of Reformation Lutheran Church in New Market, Va.

packing 1

Luke’s Backpack is an outreach of Shenandoah Valley Lutheran Ministries which provides food for 254 students in 9 schools in Shenandoah County during the school year. Bags of food are assembled each week with enough food for 3 meals a day for two days.

Some of the packages that were created on Monday were sent home this afternoon for the students and their families to eat this weekend.

“Hunger is a pretty brutal condition and we do have children in Shenandoah County who don’t have enough to eat,” said Long.

Packing 2

The event was coordinated as part of the Obama Administration’s Serve Rural Initiative, an effort to increase volunteering to help build rural communities. AmeriCorps Vista

 

“There’s poverty all over the place,” said Max Finberg, the executive director of AmeriCorps VISTA. “So we wanted to make sure is that rural America was represented on MLK Day.”

 

“Luke’s Backpack cannot thank Max and all the volunteers enough,” said long. “It was an incredible way to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. We saw people who are using this day for service and it was so good to see people come out in Shenandoah County.”