Author: greg@illinifightinghunger.org

The Wesley Evening Food Pantry serves hundreds of individuals in the Champaign-Urbana community who face food insecurity. Among the most needed items for the Pantry’s monthly distribution is long-grain white rice. To meet needs, especially during the summer months, the Wesley Evening Pantry requires approximately 2,000 lbs of long-grain white rice per month.

Since September, 2012, the Wesley Evening Food Pantry has been provided with sufficient rice through the effort of community supporters. The concept is simple: community groups purchase bulk rice and bags for re-packing and organize volunteers from their organization to repackage the rice into 1-lb and 3-lb packages for distribution at the Wesley Pantry.

Illini Fighting Hunger has facilitated this process since its founding in 2012. We provide the equipment and resources needed to make organizing a project simple for community groups, churches, youth groups, clubs and other organizations. Make this an opportunity for your group or club to engage food insecurity in your community in a hands-on way and meet a very real need for those facing hunger!

It takes just $700.00 to purchase 2,000 lbs of rice, as well as 30 volunteers and approximately two hours to repackage one month’s rice needs for the Pantry. However, there is no minimum event size requirement and we welcome projects of any size. We are happy to host you at the Wesley Foundation, or to take our equipment to your facility for a project and connect the food packaged with a food agency of your choice.

Please contact us if you are interested in hosting a project of your own!

This is the website for Illini Fighting Hunger the student organization, however, if you’re a fan of Fighting Illini Athletics, you may hear about the Illini Fighting Hunger campaign! Our organization (the student group) is a partner in this campaign, which shares the same name and is organized by the Eastern Illinois Foodbank and Fighting Illini Athletics with the goal of raising the funds for 1 million meals during the 2014-2015 academic year.

Learn more about the campaign by going to www.illinifightinghunger.com!

Thanks to Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in St. Joseph, Illinois, Illini Fighting Hunger reached an incredible milestone on March 8th – over 500,000 meals packaged to date! More than 150 volunteers of all ages came together to package rice-soy casserole meals to benefit the 14 counties served by the Eastern Illinois Foodbank.

Prince of Peace did such an amazing job with raising funds and inspiring volunteers that they set the second-place record for our largest single-day meal packaging event! In five hours, equipment and ingredients were unloaded and set up, 57,078 meals were packaged, and all the equipment and supplies were loaded back onto trucks.

Interested in hosting your own packaging event? Be sure to visit our Organize An Event page today!

Last year more than 1,200 volunteers participated in meal packaging with Illini Fighting Hunger for the Community & Campus Day of Service. This year, members of the local community and University of Illinois faculty, staff, and students will join forces once again to kick off National Volunteer Week 2014, which will take place from April 6-12.

The Food Packaging Project will involve packaging 147,000 meals – one thousand for every year of public engagement since the University was chartered – for local foodbanks to be distributed to needy families in Champaign-Urbana. Hundreds of volunteers are needed for the food packaging project, and several volunteer shifts will be available during the day. Be sure to help us celebrate 147 years of public engagement in the afternoon at an after-party! Register to volunteer today at: https://cuvolunteer.org/DayOfService2014

If you’d like to support the Community & Campus Day of Service, but you can’t be there on the day of the event (or even if you can!), we need financial support to cover the cost of the ingredients in the meal. Donate online here! Or send a check to: Illini Fighting Hunger at 1203 W Green St, Urbana, IL 61801. Your donation is tax deductible.