2025 - MORE THAN 50,000 MEALS!
Destined for distribution to hunger-challenged people in the local vicinity, that number took the club’s project history grand total to more than 500,000 packed meals, a milestone half-million end to Bedford Rotary’s 11th annual effort to combat food insecurity globally and locally.Middlesex Community College, the long-time gracious sponsor and indispensable venue for the event, was a dry haven for the volunteers who, undeterred by rain, checked in, donned hair nets, and found their meal-packing workstations. They then spent two and a half hours combining ingredients to assemble the hundreds of six-serving Mac and Cheese meal packages.
A spectacle of coordinated chaos, raucous exuberance, collaborative camaraderie, and enthusiastic teamwork, punctuated by packer-team competition, ended Rotary’s nine months of planning and preparation, the uniting of the elements that brought this year’s Hope for the Hungry to fruition.
The number one element - the 200-plus volunteers, the loyal packer veterans, like BAE employees, back to do it again, families, Moms, Dads and children working alongside one another, Rotarians from the Merrimack Valley, Chelmsford, Billerica, and Bedford clubs, and the ones who were packing for the first time, like the SAAB (South Asian Association of Bedford) group, and especially the Ocular Therapeutix crew that kept packing till the very end, along with BAE Systems, when the last of the meal ingredients was gone. Also included:
Meals of Hope New England, and V.P. Jack Day, major sponsor, and meal-packing mentor/leader for the second year of partnership with Hope for the Hungry.
The Sponsors, whose generosity made it possible by funding the purchase enough ingredients to assemble 50k meals - Brookline Bank, Northern Bank, Enterprise Bank, Salem Five Bank, Meals of Hope, Ocular Therapeutix, Ken’s NY Deli, the Rotary Club of Chelmsford, the Rotary Club of Billerica, the Bedford Rotary Foundation, Debi Malone, Linda & Frank Cargiuolo, plus a grant from Rotary District 7910 and many individual donations.
Middlesex Community College provided the ideal space for meal-packing, and its administration and staff, particularly the Facilities crew led by Eric Wendling, accommodated our every request.
Last in the project chain are the Merrimack Valley Food Bank, the local Bedford, Billerica, Lexington, and MCC food pantries. In the coming months, they will bring Hope for the Hungry by distributing those 50-thousand meals to food-challenged people in more than 33 neighboring Massachusetts communities.
Stay tuned to Bedford Rotary’s website, bedfordmarotary.org, for Hope for the Hungry 2026.