“With a quarter and a little bit of time you can change somebody’s life said Aaron Echols, resident director of Lovernich.
This Friday, the Housing & Residence Life office is partnering with the program Stop Hunger Now to host an event aiding people in Haiti who are living below the poverty line and do not have enough to eat. After many students left the Global Poverty Project convocation March 7 looking for ways to get involved, this event may be the perfect opportunity to give some valued service.
Friday’s event will take place in the Caf between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., where student and faculty volunteers will work together to package 20,000 nutritious meals, each costing about 25 cents. Initially, Housing & Residence Life planned to package 10,000 meals, but due to a $1,500 contribution from SGA and donations from students and faculty over the past several months totaling over $4,500, the goal has been raised to 20,000 meals.
Stop Hunger Now is an international hunger relief organization that has brought together volunteers at universities, churches and community groups with shipping and distribution mechanisms in 72 countries around the world. In its 12 years of operation, the organization has worked to raise awareness and community involvement in the mission to end hunger in the world, and has distributed more than 34 million meals. Just two months ago, Stop Hunger Now started operations in California and began reaching out to local networks to promote its cause.
At the same time Housing & Residence Life was looking to find more ways to make service accessible to students who typically don’t have time to participate in service projects wrote Kerri Heath, director of HRL. This project is perfect because it will be happening in our cafeteria so students can volunteer an hour or two of their time without even leaving campus.”
This is the first time Pepperdine has partnered with Stop Hunger Now but Echols anticipates a good turnout with the limited time requirement.
“I just hope it’s something students will realize the scale of that they can have a huge impact with such a small amount of time and effort. I would love to see this be something that takes off and grows Echols said.
Heath expects to use Friday’s event as a model for future service opportunities on campus.
We hope to gauge the success of this service program and bring it back in future years with a hope to pack more meals each time Heath wrote.
HRL has a table set up in the Caf during meal times for people to donate money or sign up for a volunteer shift, and questions can also be directed to housing@pepperdine.edu or to the HRL office