On Thursday, April 11, instead of doing afternoon sports, the Verde Valley School community will pack 40,000 meals for the food insecure in two hours.

This event will happen in partnership with Manzanita Outreach.

Twenty thousand meals are destined for Haiti, the poorest country in the Northern Hemisphere. The remaining 20,000 meals will be delivered to local food insecure families and tribal communities in Northern Arizona.

“This is a first and has the potential to become a yearly event,” Caroline Diehl, VVS’s Global Goals Program Director, said. “VVS has volunteered with Kids Against Hunger and Manzanita Outreach in the past, but we’ve never hosted a packing event on campus. All the students, coaches, faculty and staff will join forces to pack the nutrient and calorie-dense meal packs that stave off malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies. We’ll use some of the proceeds from VVS’s recent 10th Annual Hunger Banquet to help fund the packing event.”

Manzanita Outreach focuses on feeding the food insecure in Verde Valley and abroad in Haiti. Pop-up Pantries in low income, low access communities, Mobile Outreach programs that deliver food-boxes to seniors and Hope Food Packs 4 Kids that are delivered directly to schools are just some of the ways that Manzanita Outreach is trying to fill the gaps in food access.

Verde Valley School is an independent, co-educational, grades 9-12 boarding and day school in Sedona offering the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. This is a challenging curriculum, which fosters critical thinking and principled inquiry with the aim of helping students become responsible members of a global community.

“Together, our efforts are making a difference in feeding the hungry and bringing more community awareness to their plight, locally and worldwide,” Diehl said. “Living in a community where doing events like this is supported wholeheartedly and where our mission of service and world citizenship come alive gives me so much joy.”