Prepping to pack

Raising $25,000 is a tall task for a group of high school students.
By selling cotton candy, peddling T-shirts and soliciting donations, they’re doing it a little bit at a time. But they still have a long way to go.
Jay County High School’s National Honor Society chapter has about $7,000 in donations and pledges, putting them about 28 percent of the way to their fundraising target. That money is the key to reaching their ultimate goal — to pack 100,000 meals in a single day to help feed malnourished children around the world.
In addition to their four quarterly projects for the year, the honor society students decided to take on a single, overarching effort to host a Feed My Starving Children MobilePack after taking part in one in Nappanee in the spring.
The JCHS event is scheduled for April 29, but there is a lot to be done in the five months until that date.
The biggest part of that work is continuing to raise money. The first third is due 90 days before the MobilePack, the second third 30 days prior and final third 30 days after.
“I really, really, really want all $25,000 before the pack,” said NHS advisor Chrissy Krieg, “because it would make me very nervous to wait for the day of and hope and pray people coming to pack donate enough to get us over that threshold.”
To that end, the group, with the leadership team of Katie Carpenter, Kiara Walter, Samantha Link, Maddie Strausburg and Taylor Homan at the helm, has plenty of opportunities.
In addition to seeking donations — Portland Kiwanis was first in with $1,500, and Dunkirk Kiwanis ($500) and Asbury United Methodist Church ($2,500) have followed — the group’s best fundraiser so far has been selling cotton candy. It pulled in $1,700 at three Patriot football games, in part because all of the supplies and equipment were donated.
Cotton candy sales are planned for three Jay County boys basketball games — Dec. 17 against Fort Recovery, Dec. 30 against Muncie Central and Feb. 17 for Senior Night against Norwell. Honor society members will also sell Feb. 4, when JCHS hosts the wrestling regional and girls swimming sectional meets on the same day.
The group is also selling two T-shirts and a hat that Link designed through her job at T-Flyerz in Portland. The shirts feature the logo for Feed My Starving Children, a Minnesota-based organization that partners with churches, schools and service organizations to pack and ship food to those in need, along with JCHS branding.
The backs of the shirts feature quotes, one a Bible verse associated with Feed My Starving Children — “For I was hungry and you gave me food” — and the other a rhyme from a Dr. Seuss book — “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot … nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
The Seuss quote comes from the book “The Lorax” and so summed up the way Carpenter feels about the project that she sent it in a text message to Link saying she felt it they should use it. Upon receiving it, Link was in tears.
“Up ’til now, one person couldn’t make a difference, in my mind,” Carpenter said. “But now when I hear people say that, I’m like, ‘No, you can. You do not have any idea what you as a person can do.’ It’s really amazing.”
It’s a message they’re excited to pass on to students at the middle and elementary school levels.
In the coming months, Jay County Honor Society representatives will be visiting the junior honor society groups at East Jay and West Jay middle schools to encourage them to take create their own fundraising projects to help the cause. They’ll do the same at elementary schools, where they will talk to student council groups.
“And then hopefully on pack day … I would love to see all those kids come out and make it a community- and school-wide event,” said Krieg. “I love that they’re wanting to empower the middle schoolers and elementary kids and show them that they can make a huge difference.”
Strausburg said she remembers being in those groups when she was younger but not understanding the ability she had to help. It’s a message she hopes to pass on to her sisters — Kelly and Emily — and their friends.
“I never really felt like I could make a difference at all. I kind of just felt like it was just another club to be in,” she said “I feel like we can really show them how if they stay involved they can still do stuff.
“I never thought I’d do something like this in high school.”
Jay County Honor Society students will also be soliciting donations, planning to focus on churches and service groups between now and the end of the year. After that, they’ll shift to making pitches to the local business community.
And they will bring in funds by working at concession stands at Lucas Oil Stadium and Indiana Convention Center.
The MobilePack, which will be held in the JCHS auxiliary gym, will be a massive effort to assemble 100,000 meals in a single day.
Volunteers have tasks that involve putting together MannaPacks that consist of dry ingredients — rice, soy, vitamins, minerals and dehydrated vegetables — in small pouches. They’re designed to be prepared by just adding boiling water.
Anyone ages 5 and older will be able to get involved.
“There is something for everybody,” Carpenter said.
A sign-up link will go active on the Feed My Starving Children website — http://www.fmsc.org — about six weeks before the MobilePack. It is one of just two currently scheduled for Indiana in 2016. The other is March 17 at South Adams High School, which also hosted a MobilePack in 2015.
Food from the events is distributed among nearly 70 countries, with the most-frequently served include Haiti, with more than 69 million meals shipped to he Caribbean nation, the Philippines, North Korea and Nicaragua. The organization focuses not just on those who are hungry, but truly starving.
It’s a group Link said she didn’t realize existed before taking part in the project with her Jay County classmates.
“Now that I’ve seen it first-hand on a real level, my whole outlook is different,” she said. “It’s changed me, in a good way.
“It’s impacted my life in such a way that I want to be able to give people the opportunity to feel the way that I feel when I work on this project with these girls. I want other people to be able to feel this, because it is incredible.”