To the Editor:
The Wilton Interfaith Action Committee (Wi-ACT) held its annual meal-packaging event on Saturday, Oct. 19. Over 750 volunteers (from 6-years-old to senior citizens) packaged 160,000 meals working in four, two-hour shifts throughout the day. Eight foot high pallets containing boxes of hermetically sealed, highly nutritious meals were loaded onto a 40-ft. ocean-going container as they were completed by the volunteers. The meals left directly from the WEPCO Church Complex in Wilton where they were packaged, to shipboard loading destined for Somalia. They will be served to otherwise starving children in educational settings in which the children served can be nourished in mind as well as in body. In addition, meal-packaging volunteers contributed nonperishable items that filled several SUVs, to help to address food needs locally. This is one of the largest meal-packaging events of its kind anywhere in the entire Northeast and is regularly used as an example of what other communities can do themselves.
Wi-ACT thanks both its volunteers and its donors without whom this event–now in its 8th year and with the 1,000,000-meal mark having been passed last year–would not be possible since Wi-ACT needs to pay almost $50,000 annually for the bulk ingredients packaged (at a very reasonable 31 cents per meal) paid to highly rated nonprofit Rise Against Hunger, Inc. These donors, including the 12 Wilton faith institutions–Christian, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim–whose congregants comprise Wi-ACT and the following individuals and businesses: the Kaskell, Forsyth, Gortz, Griffin, Vanis, Coffman, Sprole, Brautigam and Majesky families; and Michael Kaelin/Cummings & Lockwood LLC, Rose Kallor LLP, Wilton Kiwanis, Wilton Rotary, Caraluzzi’s, Gregory and Adams P.C., Garavel, Untangled, Webster Bank, Max Dental, Little Pub, Orem’s, Lisa Gioffre Baird, Esq., Paul’s Prosperous Printing, the Village Market, and others who wish to remain anonymous. Wi-ACT also especially thanks the Boy Scouts of Troop 125 and their leaders who once again assisted mightily in the set-up work for the event the night before, moving hundreds of heavy ingredient bags and boxes into position on the packaging floor and assembling all 748 of the empty boxes used the following day to hold the meal packages.
Wi-ACT’s 38-Member Steering Committee
