Hope For the Hungry: April 26th Middlesex Community College, Bedford

The Rotary Club of Bedford is counting the days to Hope for the Hungry 2025, the club’s annual meal-packing to fight hunger. The event on Saturday, April 26 happens from 9:15 a.m. to noon at the Bedford Campus Center of Middlesex Community College. Led by the Rotary Club of Bedford, the event is co-hosted this year by the Rotary Clubs of Chelmsford and Merrimack Valley. Planning for the meal-packing began months ago.
 
The top priority was fundraising to purchase the meal-making ingredients. Sponsors and donors to date include Rotary District 7910, Rotary Club of Bedford, Meals of Hope, Brookline Bank, Northern Bank, Ken’s NY Deli & Pizzeria, Enterprise Bank, Ocular Therapeutix, Rotary Club of Billerica, and Laer Realty Partners/Debi Malone. Click here to donate.
 
The priority now are volunteers who are essential to Hope for the Hungry’s success.
 
Twelve long tables, stocked for packing, await the dozens of packers needed to assemble thousands of meals over the course of a few hours. Past volunteers often return to pack again as do the crew members who supply and support the packers. It’s all about teamwork. Club members, neighbors, work colleagues and families form teams, all working towards a common goal while having fun.

Starting in 2013, except for two years during Covid, this is the 11th year of Bedford Rotary’s ongoing effort to combat food insecurity, globally and locally.

The packed meals fed children and families in poor African nations in earlier years. Last year, a partnership began with Meals of Hope that turned the focus to local needs.

Based in Naples, FL with its northeast headquarters in Chelmsford, it supplies all the packing paraphernalia and the ingredients for this year’s chosen Mac ‘n Cheese meals. The bulk of the packed meals are now delivered to the Merrimack Valley Food Bank, but some also go to the Bedford Food Pantry.

The April 26 event also provides the opportunity to join Bedford Rotary’s long-standing support of the Middlesex Community College food pantries.

The Campus Center where the meal packing will take place will be open for collection drop-offs of personal care items to benefit the MCC food pantries in Bedford and Lowell. The list of items being collected are in the flyer.