Volunteers, donations needed for Palace food-packing event

Organizers are asking for help with the upcoming Impact Lives food-packing event in Mitchell.

The event will be from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. May 8 at the Corn Palace. The goal is to pack 1,527 boxes. Each box will contain 36 bags, and each bag will contain six meals. If the goal is reached, the effort will produce about 330,000 meals for needy people somewhere in the world.

It costs $54 for the supplies and shipping for one box. A total of $82,500 is needed for food ingredients, shipping and distribution, according to event organizer Deb Weitala. As of Monday, about $20,000 had been raised.

Between 1,000 and 1,200 volunteers will be needed. So far, about 400 are signed up.

Weitala encouraged people to consider participating.

“To have 1,200 people in our community standing side-byside doing something that is so huge that they could never do it on their own is an incredible feeling, and there is such excitement there,” she said. “This is something that we can do, and we can know that we are actually helping to alleviate starvation somewhere.”

Weitala and other volunteers have been putting up posters and talking to service groups since November.

“I feel like people now know what it is, and they may be planning to give and just have not done it yet,” she said. “It’s just really crucial for us to get the funding in, because we have to pay for all the ingredients that are coming in.”

Last year, the first time the effort had occurred in Mitchell, 1,200 volunteers packed 330,068 meals. The food was delivered to a Haitian refugee camp in the Dominican Republic.

This year, as the number of refugees has increased in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, it’s likely that the meals will go there again, but Weitala said the meals will go wherever the need is the most immediate. The national Impact Lives organization has already sent more than $2 million worth of meals to Haiti since the earthquake.

“If something would happen between now and then that needed an immediate response, we would be there,” Weitala said.

Volunteers for the May 8 local event are needed for two-hour shifts beginning at 8 a.m. The shifts that are most in need are the 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. time slots.

Those interested in helping should contact Weitala at 605-999-8994. To donate, make checks payable to Impact Lives and send them to Deb Weitala at Northridge Baptist Church, P.O. Box 631, Mitchell, S.D., 57301. Impact Lives, an official nonprofit organization, can supply a receipt.

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