In January 2012, Heronbridge College decided that they wanted to host a Stop Hunger Southern Africa Meal Packaging event at their school. With great enthusiasm and over a period of a just few months, they raised R120,000 to realise their goal. This meant that the students would need to package 60,000 meals for the hungry!
It was decided that the best way to ensure that all the students could be involved in the event, was to split it over two days.
470 senior school pupils, from grade 8 to grade 12 attended the first day. Forming a human production line and taking turns, during 5 one hour shifts, these youngsters packaged 40,000 meals. In order to raise the excitement levels, grades competed against each other to see which grade could pack the meals the fastest. Incredibly a total of 2585 community service hours were clocked up by these students in just 5½ hours!
Day two dawned and the senior pupils made way for the senior primary pupils. Grade 4 to grade 7 pupils marched in, ready to get down to business. 376 children packaged 20,000 meals over 4 hours. These pupils had amassed 1504 community hours in total. What an achievement!
Although the junior primary students were not able to participate in the actual packing, they visited the hall to see what the excitement was all about.
Heronbridge College holds the record for a school hosted meal packaging event:
- 846 pupils volunteered
- 60 000 meals packaged in just 9½ hours
- 4089 collective community service hours
Thanks to Heronbridge College’s generosity, 455 children will be fed for 6 months!
The staff of Heronbridge, not to be out-done, has decided that they will partake in their own event towards the end of 2012. Stop Hunger Now Southern Africa commend the generosity of the staff, pupils and parents of Heronbridge College – with such caring people we will be able to feed more and more starving children each year.
