Impact Lives packs the Palace again

Mitchell proved that a large-scale food-packaging effort was possible when Impact Lives came to the city in April 2009.

About 1,200 volunteers proved it again Saturday at the Corn Palace, packaging the ingredients for 330,000 meals between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Planning for the event took months, said organizer Deb Weitala, a ministry assistant at Northridge Baptist Church in Mitchell. Weitala said volunteers worked hard and met packaging goals. Cash donations, however, fell short.

About $82,500 was needed to pay for the event, and $68,500 was collected.

“We still need another $14,000 in donations,” she said.

The food will help to change lives around the world, said Impact Lives President Ramon Pastrano, who spent the day patiently encouraging volunteers who spent shifts lifting, weighing, measuring and packaging food for people in nations they will likely never visit. About a half hour of every two-hour shift was dedicated to educating those who had the time about the work of Impact Lives.

Pastrano did his part to put a face to the aid that has helped earthquake victims in Haiti and the destitute elsewhere.

He said the food packaged Saturday will likely help countless thousands in Southeast Asia.

Volunteers donned hair nets and turned the floor of the Corn Palace into a factory, rapidly assembling rice, soy protein, spices and other ingredients into life-saving food packages. The high-nutrition formula was developed with the help of Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland and General Mills corporations, Pastrano said.

Hoots and cheers punctuated the work as each crew finished filling another box with 36 packages of food.

It’s not just about packaging the food, Pastrano said, but making “sure that the food goes to the right places and doesn’t fall into the black market.”

Volunteer Paula Northrup, who worked as a “roamer” taping up filled boxes of food products, said she felt an emotional connection to the work.

“The thing that really impacted me most about this is that when I’m putting the rice in these boxes it occurs to me that there’s a mom somewhere praying for that bag of rice to feed her kids,” she said. “It’s very touching to be a part of that.”

Pastrano 47, was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and raised in Puerto Rico. He attended colleges in the United States and served as a supply officer in the U.S. Navy. He was on the fast track to a successful career with a Fortune 500 medical supply company when a 2001 trip back to the Dominican Republic changed his life forever.

On that trip he saw poverty, hunger and people living in squalor. He also saw well-meaning but fumbling efforts by outsiders to help.

He turned his back on the easy life and stepped out in faith.

“I realized that many of the people who tried to help didn’t speak the language and didn’t have a clear of understanding of that particular place. That’s what moved me to try to teach people to do this better and to be more effective,” he said.

After nearly seven years of hard work, Impact Lives became an official 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation.

Mitchell’s first food packaging event was a turning point for Impact Lives, he said. The event showed that community involvement can make a difference.

Since then there have been similar and even larger packaging events around the country, he said.

Pastrano said he spends time traveling and learning about various cultures so he can help them transform from within.

In the final analysis, Impact Lives is not just about food distribution.

“We are not a food packaging organization per se,” he said. “We are an organization that uses food as a tool to train, equip and catalyze people. We do a lot of training to help people understand about world poverty, social justice and diversity.”

It takes boots on the street and donations to get the work done, he said.

“Good intentions are not enough and they sometimes can do more damage than good.”

Without a true understanding of a culture or the particular problems faced by that culture, those good intentions can end up creating the opposite result from what is wanted.

“When food is not properly distributed, it can end up in places where it can damage instead of help local economies,” Pastrano said.

When people receive food for free, they don’t purchase from local farmers and even those farmers end up on the relief lines because they can no longer afford to grow their food.

“It’s a delicate balance,” Pastrano said. “It needs to be distributed strategically.”

Much of the food goes to schools and children’s homes or to the truly destitute.

“You need to understand the culture first and the people and their needs before trying to solve their problems. You need to be part of that community and experience it yourself and then come alongside and invite them into the process to find a solution.”

That avoids a paternalistic attitude.

“It’s not just coming from above and telling them: ‘This is what I think you need.’ ”

Pastrano laughed and said his training as a naval supply officer has proven invaluable working out the sometimes daunting logistics of getting the food where it’s needed.

So far, Impact Lives has had pretty good success, he believes, “And we’ve had no reports of our food ending up on the black market.”

The food packages offer easy-to-use nutrition. Rice is a grain that’s universally accepted worldwide.

“No special cooking directions are needed. Everyone knows how to cook rice,” he said.

As crews swept up scattered rice from the floor of the Corn Palace, a weary Deb Weitala tallied up the donations and discovered $14,000 will be needed to cover costs.

“People think we just package the food, but we must also purchase it. At a cost of 25 cents a meal, the 330,000 meals we packed on Saturday will cost us $82,500. So far we have $68,500. That money not only pays for raw ingredients, but also for packaging supplies, shipping and distribution.”

A donation may be made by writing a check to Impact Lives and sending it care of Northridge Baptist Church, PO Box 631, Mitchell, SD 57301.

When’s the next packaging event?

“Ask me next week,” Weitala said with a laugh.

Tags: impact lives, news, local