On Wednesday, February 7, over 30 Pleasant Valley students volunteered their time to package meals for Kids Against Hunger, a non-profit humanitarian organization that provides nutritious meals to impoverished and malnourished children around the world. The goal of this organization is to move recipient families from starvation or food insecurity to self-sufficiency.

Pleasant Valley students packaged sustainable and nutritious meals with supplies provided by Your Quad Cities. “We packaged rice, soy, dried vegetables, and a blend of vitamins and minerals together in back to send to people in need,” Ashlyn Haack, senior on the Service Learning Committee, said. “We learned about the impact of the meals we were packaging.”

“Most students are apprehensive,” Emily Jepsen, service learning coordinator, said. Many students are hesitant and unwilling to give up their early out to volunteer for a few hours. Though it only takes a few hours to volunteer, the impact of dedicating this small amount of time can have a powerful impact. By participating in the Kids Against Hunger event, these students packaged over 4500 meals that will be distributed in the community and around the world.

According to Jepsen, “There were a lot of ninth grade volunteers for this event, and they realized how much fun it can be and that they could do it with friends and still give back.” With the majority of participants being new volunteers, Jepsen hopes to see growth in the upcoming service learning events. “Kids Against Hunger has monthly events that students can sign up for,” Jepsen said.

She tries to concentrate on a different non-profit each month in order to expose students to different places that they can volunteer. “Getting students into volunteering early in high school will prompt them to continue volunteering and find something that they truly enjoy,” Jepsen explained.

For their next undertaking, the Service Learning Committee will be hosting an environmental project. On April 4, Living Lands and Waters are bringing their tree wrapping station to the high school. “We want to get 40 students to wrap trees as a part of their Million Tree Project,” Jepsen stated. She hopes to see an increase in participation because of the project’s convenient location.