For the past five years, the St. Pius X Theology Department has hosted Rise Against Hunger, an organization that packages meals to send all around the world. During the schoolwide service project, the students worked in assembly lines with different jobs to pack and box rice, soy, and dehydrated vegetables into bags to feed families. By the end of the day, students packaged 41,250 meals. 

A lesser-known fact about this meal-packing day is that the Class of 2018 started the annual service opportunity.

“Six years ago, the senior class gift to the school was a Rise Against Hunger day. They asked theology if they could host it within our theology classes so the whole school could experience it,” theology teacher Mrs. Lindsey Farrell said.

Mrs. Farrell said that for her, “feeding the hungry is such a simple call, especially because we get to eat food here all the time. So I think it’s an awesome thing to get to do together on a huge scale.” 

The service project also provided her an opportunity to think about how much food people waste on a daily basis and led her to try to be more intentional about food waste in her own life. 

“I really liked the phrase we said all day, ‘every grain of rice counts,’” Mrs. Farrell said because it made her think about being intentional about how much food she packaged or dropped. 

“Several of my students came to me later saying, ‘Ms. Farrell, did you notice the french fries on the floor? We’ve wasted so many french fries [in the cafeteria] and you were so worried about a grain of rice,’” she said. 

So the next time you eat a meal, think for a moment about how much food you waste and how you can give back to the world.