FAYETTEVILLE — Volunteers from the community and University of Arkansas athletics broke a world record Saturday by packing 1.4 million Haiti “care” meals in 24 hours.
Though the intrepid, hairnet wearing packers didn’t hit their target of 2 millionpackages, at 4:08 p.m. they surpassed the previous world record of 1.2 million set in Kansas City in January.
“So we had about three hours left when we broke the record,” UA athletics spokesman Kevin Trainor said Saturday evening.
Final tally: 1,420,638 bags of rice and beans.
“It was also significant because it helped Numana as a group go over 20 million meals since the earthquake,” Trainor added.
Wearing bonnets, aprons and gloves, volunteers turned out for minimum two-hour shifts for “Razorback Relief Operation Haiti” during a 24-hour period that began at 7 p.m. Friday in the Randal Tyson Track Center on the UAcampus.
There they formed assembly lines to measure, bag, seal and pack dried ingredients for “fortified rice-soy casserole,” a meal that - while not “instant” - can be boiled by Haitian families in roughly 20 minutes.
Numana Inc., an El Dorado, Kan.-based hunger relief or-ganization, which has been perfecting its method of masspacking and expediting meals to areas in need for three years, used its connections within UA’s athletic department to stage this weekend’s effort.
For Razorbacks running back Broderick Green, giving back to the community has been a way of life since childhood.
“It’s something I’ve always grown up doing,” Green, 21, of Little Rock said Saturday, adding that his mother and grandmother were always taking him and his brothers to help serve holiday meals to those in need.
“It’s about being blessed, and being able to see the opportunity to help someone else,” Green said about 2 1/2 hours into his shift, during which time his table had packed more than 4,300 meals. “I would never pass that up.”
‘FEED ME’
At one end of the indoor track, Numana Chief Executive Officer Rick McNary was busy unfolding and taping the Numana-branded shipping boxes, each designed to transport 216 meal packages.
By his count, the Fayetteville effort had resulted in an average 150 volunteers per two-hour shift and more than 800,000 meals by roughly 11 a.m., about 16 hours in.
A gong was stationed by the track to “ring” each time a new 10,000 meals were packed.
Haiti was ravaged by a Jan. 12 earthquake.
Roughly 4 million people among the island nation’s 9 million population is considered critically malnourished, said McNary, one of Numana’s founders.
A few years back, he was on a mission trip to Nicaragua when inspiration came.
“I met my first starving girl eight years ago,” McNary said. The 5-year-old pleaded with him in Spanish: “Feed me - I’m starving.”
“So I decided I wanted to spend the rest of my life figuring out how to feed hungry people,” he said.
It took about four years for the figuring-out part, he said, and then three years ago he helped found Numana.
Numana’s assembly lines are set up so that the ingredients are combined into four measurable groups.
Vitamin powder, soy powder and beans go in first, he said. The heaviest ingredient, long-grain rice, goes in last so its measurement can be adjusted until each bag is consistently weighted.
According to the instructions, a bag makes six meal supplements when cooked with water.
It’s a simple but effective formula that he credits to Richard Proudfit of Minnesota, founder of Kids Against Hunger.
“It’s specifically designed to target the immune system of malnourished people,” Mc-Nary said, adding that it has a chicken-bouillon flavoring. “It tastes very good.”
THE RIGHT FORMULA
According to kidsagainsthunger.org, Proudfit’s early efforts to feed starving children using surplus foods were unsuccessful.
Proudfit worked with food industry executives until he came up with a formula that could meet basic nutrition needs and, at the same time, avoid being so rich that thechildren couldn’t keep it down. He also worked to ensure the recipes would meet “the broad range of cultural tastes and religious prohibitions found around the world.”
For this Haiti shipment, it was decided that a recipe using dehydrated pinto beans in place of dried vegetables was most akin to the Haitian diet, McNary said.
The clear bags for the meals were labeled with cooking instructions, nutrition facts and ingredient information, and the logos for Numana and for The Salvation Army and its global Salvation Army World Service Office.
Under the “Not to Be Sold” disclaimer, a note reads: This food is to be given freely because Jesus loves little children.”
On the other side of the bag, scam and safety alerts and scripture from Psalms 46:1 are printed in English and Creole.
Families register for the meals through the international Salvation Army so the meals don’t end up on the black market. They can take a box or half a box home, depending on family size.
Another founder, Numana corporate development officer Dick A. Morris III, said with a grin, above the din of peppy pop and rock tunes blaring over a loudspeaker in the super-cooled Tyson track center, that he is better at the vision part of the job than at taping boxes.
A few years back, the gregarious Morris raised more than $5 million toward the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. As a result, he won a substantial cash award as part of winning the national Veterans of Foreign Wars’ “Americanism Award,” and he and his wife Denice wanted to use the money for philanthropic purposes.
He perfected a way to get volunteers to pack shipments after learning that a fundraising project for a national funeral directors association - a balloon launch featuring biodegradable materials and instruction booklets - was going to cost $250,000 to package and ship.
“I said, ‘I’ll do it.’”
About 1,200 volunteers from his hometown of El Dorado, Kan., showed up to help - about 10 percent of its population, he said.
“We filled three semitrucks in three hours,” Morris said.
UA CONNECTIONS
Later, Numana officials learned that, in some hunger relief efforts, food can sit in a warehouse for as long as a year while the groups find themoney or the means to pack and ship it.
“So we used this same packing mechanism for Numana,” Morris said as he checked a log sheet about 12:45 p.m. (He and a man in charge of loading the food boxes onto trucks estimate that, at 938,920 meals packed, they’re about an hour away from the 1 million mark).
More packing events were staged in big cities and small towns alike.
But where else could Numana turn?
Morris had a key connection to the UA athletic department: His son, former All-American golfer Rich Morris of Fayetteville is a 1999 UA graduate.
“My dad called me six weeks ago and said, would you be willing to do an event in Fayetteville,” the younger Morris said as he prowled the floor of the track, overseeing operations.
Some funding from the World Relief Organization was apparently about to run out, so there was a time crunch for an event like this that typically take 3-4 months to organize, Rich Morris said.
“We really put this together in less than six weeks,” he said.
Even if the Fayetteville effort just breaks the record or barely surpasses it, “Think of all the lives we’ll save,” Rich said.
Elsewhere Saturday, similar packing events were going on in Pratt, Kan., and Milwaukee, McNary said, but neither are seeking to break the record.
“Milwaukee is shooting for a million meals,” he said, and Pratt for a truckload.
VOLUNTEERING BY FAMILY
While the Hogs’ Green is sowing the rewards of volunteerism from a young age, some children at the event were just getting started.
Jared and Paula Bennett of Fayetteville each toiled at the assembly line with a Bennett child literally strapped to them.
Jay, 8 months, napped in a front sling-carrier worn by his mother as she scooped out ingredients. Addy, nearly 3, watched intently from a sturdy carrier strapped to her dad’s back. The oldest, Peter Bennett, 5, stood on a chair, wearing his little hair net, filling bags.
The family helps out at church, but this was Peter’s first time actually working for a charitable cause, his dad said.
“There are people out there that are less fortunate than us,” Jared Bennett said. “This is great experience.”
Two families that are neighbors - the Litzingers and theBlakeys - likewise had their broods in tow.
Will and Grace Litzinger, 10 and 8 respectively, drew hearts and peace signs on the packing boxes so the Haitian children would get good thoughts as well.
“We just wanted to give back to the community,” said Kristin Litzinger as her husband, Steve, worked nearby. “We’ve been talking to our kids about how blessed they are, to not want for things.”
Missy and Matthew Blakey brought son Davis and daughter Parker.
Her children have been tagging along to charity events since they were in strollers, Missy said, but now they’re old enough to learn and appreciate its meaning.
“We just thought it was a good time to teach the kids how to give back,” Missy said.
One volunteer had no hair to sheathe under his mandatory hair net, so he used it to cover his long beard.
Amie Moore of Fayetteville, a pharmaceutical sales representative who demonstrated how the ingredient-measuring went down, said wearing the hair net didn’t bother her a bit.
“That just makes it more fun,” Moore said. “I’ve given donations for Haiti, but I wanted to do something more hands-on.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 19 on 06/27/2010