On Friday, December 2, Donna Overman and Sandi Wagner attended Hunger Fight from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at the Ramallah American Club of Jacksonville, located on Parental Home Road. The Club is part of the American Federation of Ramallah, Palestine, which is a non-political, non-profit organization.
Sherri Porter founded Hunger Fight in 2012 after she was disheartened by the number of hungry children who lived in northern Florida. Headquartered in Jacksonville, their story began with a small team of people who produced and distributed shelf-stable, nutritious meals to those at risk for hunger in their community. In cahoots with educators over the past several years, they developed programing which addressed two important issues that impact children in school: hunger and illiteracy.
Donna and Sandi’s offices have participated in Hunger Strike numerous times and for the past few years, it’s been a NEFAR event, bringing together real estate professionals from Northeast Florida to pack thousands of pounds of food.
The packing event was well organized with all supplies and instructions provided and each table of “packers” working together to get their boxes filled and ready for transport to local schools.
At Overman and Wagner’s table this year, they combined the Mandarin North, Intracoastal, Hidden Hills and Watson Mortgage Corp. offices where they were in charge of packing macaroni and cheese. Their roles involved measuring dry pasta, adding dried cheese and milk to the pouch, checking for gram weight on each pouch, squeezing air out of the pouches, and then sealing them for easy transportation.
The group worked alongside each other so efficiently, they were the first group to finish their packing!
Watson participants included: Darlene Joseph, Heather Granby, Kari Steinbach, David Podvia, Mike Clark, Jennifer Hiers, Victoria Feist, Betsy Gordon, Sandi Wagner, and Donna Overman.
Overman stated of this great cause: “Food insecurity/hunger in Northeast Florida is a reality for many children and their families. Our hope is that the work we did as a team for a few hours will ensure that some of those children and families may be less hungry over the next weekend. This program continues to provide nutritious shelf-stable food in children’s backpacks on Fridays and has added an initiative to include distribution of age-appropriate books to help young readers improve their reading skills each month. Caring for our community and giving back makes our lives better as well and we are grateful for the opportunity to help.”
For more information on how you can help, please visit HungerFight.
