Photos by Jenny Kirk Volunteers take turns adding dry ingredients to a package that will serve six people when mixed with eight to 10 cups of water. The meals will help feed hungry children and families in Haiti and Marshall.

MARSHALL — A child dies every six seconds because of hunger and related causes, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. That’s nearly 16,000 deaths each day.

Building on the mission work started when Kids Against Hunger founder Richard Proudfit returned from a 1974 trip to Honduras after Hurricane Fifi, the Marshall satellite Kids Against Hunger organization is trying to do what they can to make a positive difference.

After $24,000 was raised locally, nearly 600 area volunteers joined together over the course of two days at the Marshall National Guard Armory to pack about 155,000 meals.

“I remember when we started this, Darrel (Johnson, Kids Against Hunger director in Sioux Falls, South Dakota) said, ‘Almost everybody values feeding children,'” Julie Christensen said. “It’s a cross-cultural thing. Most people — no matter what their philosophy is in life — they want people to eat. So it’s an easy sell to get volunteers from all backgrounds to come together to feed starving people. We’ve seen that.”

Amy Chen was one of many volunteers who pitched in from the Southwest Minnesota State University’s Cru (Campus Crusade) Bridges group. Several youth groups and various organizations — including SMSU’s women’s basketball, Marshall Tiger football, Marshall Area Hockey Association — helped out on Tuesday, while a variety of other individuals and groups did their part on Wednesday.

“I’m very honored to do this because we’re doing this to help people in Haiti,” Chen said.

The hands-on packing event marked the fourth time the local organization has proceeded with its mission to help hungry children and their families.

“It’s fun,” young Riley Anderson said of volunteering. “My favorite job was probably weighing (the rice).”

The hunger-relief mission was started locally after Christensen, Karen Bofferding, Tracy Soehl and a handful of others learned about the need during a 2015 mission trip to Haiti. The first volunteer-driven effort took place in fall 2016 in Marshall, with 100 volunteers packing 25,000 meals. The following spring, 102,000 meals were packed by 270 volunteers.

“We saw that the need (for the fortified rice meal packages) was so great — Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere,” Christensen said. “So we wanted to do something.”

Bofferding called the experience “life-changing.” Soehl, who has been back to Haiti two additional times, referred to the trips as “amazing.” Soehl added that she was overwhelmed by the widespread hunger in the country.

“Just at the place we worked at, they did 90,000 meals a day,” Soehl said. “That’s one day. And that’s just one of the mission organizations in Haiti.”

Christensen said food insecurity is hard for a lot of people to understand. And while feeding hungry people is key, the overall situation is even more difficult because there’s little opportunity to be self-reliant.

“There are lots of natural disasters that have come upon Haiti, but they also have a government that’s not run overly well and people who are just trying to make their way, and there isn’t a lot of opportunity to do so — clearly, I think people there would work and have a job, but the opportunity is just not there,” she said. “It’s really sad.”

Christensen the Marshall group saw a lot of positives and economic growth while they were there.

“The place we were with did a great job,” Christensen said. “They made sure that Haitians were the doctors, nurses, teachers, caregivers, pastor — it was really the Haitians that ran the organization we were part of and we were just there to assist and bring things to the local church to help them. But they really work hard to have Haitians run Haiti, as it should be.”

Christensen said there was a clinic, dental office, church and school with teachers.

“From what we saw, they were doing a great job,” she said.

Last spring,158,000 meals were packed by 500 volunteers.

“The number of volunteers keeps increasing,” Christensen said. “We tried to get 500 volunteers and I’d say almost 600 were able to come in during the seven different time frames over a two-day period. It’s great because we love having as many volunteers as possible.”

Each package of highly-nutritious rice-soy casserole — fortified with 21 essential vitamins and nine minerals, dehydrated vegetables and chicken flavoring — serves six people.

“You add eight to 10 cups of water to the dry mix and it feeds six people,” Christiansen said.

The packaged meals are highly nutritious.

“The Minnesota man who started Kids Against Hunger after seeing kids starving worked with food scientists to make something as nutritional as possible as a way to feed hungry people,” Christensen said. “It’s quite amazing. Most Americans don’t eat quite this well, though we could because we have access to it.”

While most of the 155,000 meals will go to Haiti, Christensen said the Marshall Kitchen Table Food Shelf will also receive some.

“About 500 of the meals will stay locally,” she said.

Along with Christensen, Soehl and Bofferding, Linda Saugstad, Jaci Peterson, Reid Paulson and Chad Bergjord currently serve on the Kids Against Hunger board in Marshall.

“We are just a volunteer board, so none of us are paid,” Christensen said. “Collectively, we’ve raised about $24,000 for this pack. It costs $24,000 to pay for the food, the Armory and the shipping.”

The donations came from area churches, businesses, organizations and individuals. A fundraiser supper was also held to raise money for the cause.

“We had a great turnout,” Christensen said. “We’re hoping to just continue increasing every year.”

Through the efforts of hundreds of thousands of volunteers and partnerships with humanitarian organizations worldwide, Kids Against Hunger has provided over 2 billion meals for children and their families in 70 different countries around the globe over the past several decades.