Helping feed the world during spring break

By BROOKS TAYLOR

Mt. Pleasant News

So, what did you do on your spring break?

Marcus Hanson, Jared Olson and Jake Fisk, all 14-year-olds from Cambridge, Minn., will have an experience to share when asked.

The three students are spending their spring break helping out Hanson?s grandparents, Don and Sandee Fields, with some heavy lifting and packaging at the Mt. Pleasant office of Kids Against Hunger.

?I come here every summer and wanted to bring a friend and this is the perfect time to help starving people,? reported Hanson.

Olson said he came ?to help and feed kids who needed it.?

Fisk was a last-minute addition to the group. He said originally he was not coming but when he heard that his friends Hanson and Olson were coming, ?I wanted to go if they were going.?

Transported by Hanson?s mother, the young men arrived March 28 and will return to Minnesota tomorrow (Fri.).

But before they return, they will have made their mark on the operation.

On Monday, they put 87,500 meals packaged by a New London church on seven pallets. ?Our fastest pallet was 3:53,? Marcus said proudly.

Tuesday they delivered two pick-up loads of cereal to the Tolson Community Center and one to the Fellowship Cub. Don Fields said he gets the cereal from Quaker Oats in Cedar Rapids.

?It is all either over-run or after-run and they donate it to non-profits,? he explained.

The boys also packaged six boxes of meals (216 meals to a box) and unloaded 390 boxes of Kids Against Hunger meals.

Don and Sandee Fields oversee 17 Kids Against Hunger operations in Iowa, stretching from the Mississippi River to Newton.

Last year, the 17 Iowa units packaged 3,017,520 meals. The two primary mission groups Kids Against Hunger works with are Cross International, Miami, Fla., and Convoy of Hope, Springfield, Mo.

The meals were shipped to Guatemala, San Salvador, El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Burkina Faso, Africa and Liberia. In September, 95,040 meals were donated to the Ebola outbreak victims in Liberia and the meals unloaded this week by Hanson, Olson and Fisk will all go to the Ebola hospitals in Liberia.

Looking over the massive collection in the storage garage of boxed meals and bags of ingredients still waiting to be mixed into meals gave Don Fields a sense of pride. ?Iowa is leading the charge in fighting world hunger.?

With statistics like those produced by Kids Against Hunger, it is difficult to argue the claim.