Thousands of children in Honduras will be able to get a hot meal at school thanks to volunteers at a North Huntingdon church who recently boxed about 80,000 meals.
About 200 volunteers gathered at the Norwin Christian Church this month to box prepackaged meals of rice, soybeans and vitamins purchased from the Lifeline Christian Mission of Westerville, Ohio, said Joshua Persall, executive minister.
The church raised money for the mission and paid between $20,000 and $30,000 for the meals, Persall said.
“It’s going to places where there is food insecurity, hunger and national disasters,” Persall said.
The prepackaged bags of food boxed at Norwin Christian Church — each bag contained six meals, and each box held 36 bags— will be distributed to children attending the schools sponsored by Lifeline Christian Mission, said Greg Dillow, project manager for the mission group.
“Usually, the meal they get at school is the only hot meal they get all day,” Dillow said.
The 80,000 meals that were packed into about 390 boxes were trucked to a Lifeline Christian Mission warehouse near Columbus, Ohio.
It might take four to six weeks before the five pallets of food from Norwin Christian Church are transported to New York City or Miami, where they will be loaded into shipping containers and onto ocean freighters, Dillow said.
Like many businesses throughout the country seeking to move goods and supplies overseas, the organization has had difficulties in getting the food to its destination.
“It’s just a whole logistics can of worms,” Dillow said. “We send one container every four to six weeks.”