Palm Beach Atlantic University students pack tens of thousands of meals for hungry children

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Palm Beach Atlantic students help feed needy children

Photographer: WPTV
Copyright 2012 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Posted: 04/14/2012

By: Rikki Klaus

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - More than 100 Palm Beach Atlantic University students volunteered Saturday at a Feeding Children Everywhere event. The organization aims to curtail hunger around the world by mobilizing people to prepare meals for children.

The students gathered under a white tent near the Mahoney Gym. In an assembly line, they measured and poured rice, lentils, pink Himalayan salt and six dehydrated vegetables into bags. They boxed the bags in colorfully decorated cardboard boxes, as upbeat music pounded. Some danced to the beat and sang aloud.

The goal was to prepare 50,000 nutritious meals for children around the world. A pallet-worth of boxes will stay in Palm Beach County.

"About 40% of the elementary school students in Palm Beach County are on the free and reduced lunch program, which is pretty high," said Feeding Children Everywhere founder and director Don Campbell. He says each meal only costs a quarter, and feeding a school in the U.S. for a year takes a $5,000 donation.

The need to feed struck PBA student Matthew Langford last summer in a slum near Nairobi, Kenya. He saw children who were starving.

"There's a point where we need to decide as people that have more wealth than others to go out and support those in need around the world," said Langford. The event was Langford's way to send out support. He organized it.

"It was my hope and my prayer that the heart of our campus would break for those suffering in the world," Langford said, "and I think that that has happened in some ways, so that's very good to see."

If the heart broke, it was mended through helping hands and heartfelt messages, in hopes that children around the world are nourished.

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