Summer Service Project: August 28th Meal Packing

Continuing our series of summer service projects in our partnership with the Humanist Community at Harvard, we’re excited to cosponsor another interfaith meal-packing project at the Humanist Hub to support food insecure families around Massachusetts. On the afternoon of August 28th, join us at 30 JFK Street in Cambridge to work to pack 4000 meals with volunteers from around Somerville and Cambridge. We’re excited to be joined by students from the Tufts Chaplaincy-sponsored CAFE pre-orientation program and members of the Harvard Community of Humanists, Atheists, and Agnostics (HCHAA)!

During the summer and in November each year, the Humanist Community at Harvard, now in partnership with the Tufts Humanist Chaplaincy, has hosted meal packing projects facilitated by Kids Care, Inc., a subsidiary of End Hunger New England. The program brings people of different religious and philosophical backgrounds together to work on lines putting together meal packages that can be shared with those in need and are as easy to prepare as boiling on a heat source. For this project, as we have in the past, the recipient of the meals will be Solutions at Work, an organization that facilitates transitions for people moving into temporary and permanent housing from the street by helping them find additional resources they may need. That they are able, with our help, to offer prepackaged meals can give people going through this transition one less problem to solve–finding food for a day–while they’re also looking for work and other support. We feel that offering the meals to organizations like this lives out our values of Humanist service in being self-critical about the kind of service we do and always looking to improve our impact–while in the past we would offer meals to food pantries, they often responded gratefully but that what they really need on their shelves are fresh food and storage containers. While also looking for ways to provide pantries with those resources, we believe offering packaged meals like these to organizations like Solutions at Work better facilitates their mission while also directing the program in a socially responsible direction.

In order to make these programs possible, though, the meals have to be paid for by generous donations. $1.50 pays for one packaged bag–6 meals! That can feed a family of four on a night when they might otherwise have to seek out help elsewhere. That also means your dollar goes a long way to fighting hunger! If you’re feeling strapped for cash, consider making a donation of $6–that could mean a week of family dinners for a family of three working to make ends meet throughout their days. Donations are processed by the Humanist Hub–click the following link to donate via PayPal: http://bit.ly/2ai13bd

Fighting hunger and homelessness have been priorities of the Tufts Humanist Chaplaincy’s service programming since our founding in 2014. In addition to these regular meal packing projects, we’ve sponsored Walk for Hunger teams each year and raised hundreds of dollars for Project Bread and partnered with the Somerville Homeless Coalition to bring educators on homelessness to campus and support their annual 5k Road Race. We’re excited to continue and expand these programs in the coming year!

To sign up for a shift on August 28th, fill out this form: http://bit.ly/2a5E7bV

To RSVP via Facebook, visit the event page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1018285561625145/

Looking forward to putting our values in action together!