No one act can stop world hunger, but Brad Allen and Jeremy Parnell are doing their part.
Along with a group of friends from the Bellevue campus of Mars Hill Church, Parnell and Allen are gearing up for the Eastside Fill and Feed, a fundraiser and volunteer event with the goal of packing enough meals to feed 742 children in the Philippines for an entire year.
This will be the second event for Allen, Parnell and the rest of the group. Last October, the group packed 100,000 meals at Bellevue’s Chinook Middle School. This year’s event will more than double that, with a goal of filling an entire ocean shipping container. Once packed, the container will be shipped out to the Philippines from the Port of Seattle, rather than traveling back to the Minnesota headquarters of Feed my Starving Children, the group that helps put on these types of events.
“We thought it was kind of a waste to send everything back to the Midwest when we live in a port city, and everything could go out our back door,” Allen said.
The group is looking to raise $65,000 to buy a total of 270,864 meals that volunteers will pack at the June 3 and 4 event at Redmond Assembly of God Church. For the event they are looking for 1,350 volunteers to pack meals. Trucks will come in from the Feed My Starving Children headquarters with ingredients for a rice and soy-based meal that is “nutritious and easy to digest for starving kids and it is also culturally acceptable anywhere it goes,” Allen said.
So far, the group has hit some road blocks in fundraising, having gathered a little more than $7,000 worth of donations.
“When you’re asking for donations, asking for free stuff, there’s a lot of doors that get closed,” Parnell said.
Still, Allen and Parnell are confident in the value of their mission.
For donors, Allen and Parnell are pitching the fact that an $88 pledge is enough to feed a child for an entire year. This approach has been effective, Allen said, pointing to a generous individual who staked $880, enough for 10 children, at a recent fundraiser at the downtown California Pizza Kitchen.
The group has received some corporate donations, including more than $300 from the California Pizza Kitchen fundraiser. But this late in the game, they said, the time had passed to seek corporate donations in large chunks.
The focus now is on the individual. Allen said if 30 to 40 people he knows from church were each able to find 17 people, then they would have enough donations to reach their goal.
“It boggles my mind how simple it is when it comes down to it,” he said. “We just need to find these people.”
Part of that is getting the word out. The group has been putting together online materials, a Twitter account and paper brochures and fliers they’ve hung throughout town. Potential donors can log on to the website for donations, or send checks to Allen’s home, which is also listed online.
Eastside Fill and Feed
Donations can be made online at the event’s website, http://www.eastsidefillandfeed.com
The event will be held at Redmond Assembly of God (16601 N.E. 95th St.) June 3 from 8 to 10 p.m., and will start up again on Saturday at 8 a.m., running until 8 p.m. Volunteers are also needed in two-hour shifts.
