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Editorial: Feeding more than stomachs
Op-Ed · November 06, 2014


The West Branch Lions Club turned “a” project to feed the hungry into “the” project on Oct. 25 at West Branch High School.


With all the effort by the members, led by project organizer Greg Humrichouse and President Mike Quinn and in cooperation with the Hoover Presidential Foundation, the $21,000 raised by the group also meant drumming up the necessary manpower to prepare the packages of rice and beans and mac and cheese.

And did they show up.

Some 150 people needed to come, the Lions predicted, setting up a Web site to organize all those who planned in advance to help out. But they also had a sign-up sheet to handle the many coming in on the day of the event, tracking who actually appeared. They expected some walk-ins, too.

Ask anyone in non-profit groups how hard it is to find volunteers — coming up with enough people to do the work is an effort when all you need are 10, 20 or even 50. Not only did the Lions meet the 150 goal, they exceeded it by more than 100. That’s amazing. To the point of being awe-inspiring. Especially when you consider that amounts to more than 10 percent of this city’s population.

Yet there’s the key: the Lions Club did not just recruit around West Branch. Since they planned to give the packaged food to area food pantries, they reached out to Lions Clubs in those cities as well. Through news articles, advertisements and word-of-mouth they drummed up not only interest, but excitement. Each vitamin-enriched meal feeds several people at 25 cents per meal, so the combination of smarts and simplicity means the project reaches exponentially more people with those 84,000 packages.

Each of the jobs packaging the food was so simple, too. Children as young as 2 and 4 years old helped out with duties like dropping slips of paper instructions in bags to placing tracking labels on the finished packages. Children just a bit older could accurately measure the right amount of rice or pasta or beans to scoop into each bag. Other jobs included holding bags under a funnel, adding or subtracting mini-amounts of ingredients to fall within a target weight, sealing the bags shut, counting out bags for each box and hauling boxes to a truck.

The event even attracted some bigwigs, like descendants of President Herbert Hoover, Iowa Hawkeye football and wrestling stars, at least one state senator, local elected and appointed officials, top officials within the Hoover Complex, and both District 73 candidates for state representative for the Iowa House.

Tie that in with the 50th anniversary of the state funeral for President Hoover and the Hoover Hunger Project became the place to be and the place to be seen.

With the overwhelming response to the call for volunteers, the Lions Club saw the last few packages going into the boxes in just 3 1/2 hours after they started. They planned for four hours of work, but when the help cranks out 400 packages PER MINUTE, many hands do, indeed, make light work.

The revolving crowd of volunteers had to squeeze in here and there. Families, for example, were split into pieces to fill open spots on the multiple assembly lines, meaning they got to meet new people in a friendly work environment. We imagine the event created many new social connections, or built up some existing ones, in those few hours.

Congratulations to the Lions Club on coming up with an event that, even though singular in purpose, did so much more. Please know that your massive undertaking was well worth it, and most appreciated, by both the recipients and the givers.