Saturday, Oct. 22 is the Wilton Interfaith Action Committee’s (Wi-ACT) annual Rise Against Hunger meal-packaging event day. The event is moving back again to the high level of meals that, before COVID hit, made it the largest Rise Against Hunger meal-packaging event in all of New England. The goal this year is 125,000 meals packaged by hopefully 400-plus volunteers. If fundraising and the number of volunteers allow, the goal could rise to 130,000 meals. Operations will be well-spaced over two large production floors at the WEPCO Church Complex (36 New Canaan Rd.).

What Wi-ACT most needs right now is a full complement of volunteers.  Packaging shifts run in time blocks 9-11 a.m., 11 a.m.-1 p.m., 1-3 p.m., and 3-5 p.m. Anyone can sign up to be one of the volunteers by registering online  This year, children seven years old and older can serve as volunteers as they did pre-COVID, and they play important roles in the work.

The Wilton Interfaith Action Committee is composed of laypeople from 12 Wilton faith institutions who live by their motto, “We work together for good!” Its all-day event is divided into four shifts throughout the day, each with hopefully 100 or so packaging floor volunteers. Each meal is hermetically sealed for long life and then boxed, palletized, and loaded into an ocean-going container for shipment to wherever in the world the need is greatest. Last year’s meals went to Haiti.

These meals regularly feed children in school settings where children are nourished in mind as well as in body. The number of meals planned for this year will feed 342 children for an entire year. And volunteers are asked to bring with them nonperishable food items for local food pantries.

Once again the meal-packaging event will be organized and designed specifically with volunteer safety foremost in mind. 

Wi-ACT’s COVID protocol planning was very detailed last fall for its first meal-packaging event since COVID hit. Things worked out well, following the guidance of the town and Wi-ACT’s own medical advisor, Steering Committee member Dr. Hossein Sadeghi, a nationally prominent pulmonologist.

Dr. Sadeghi’s guidance is very much present for this year’s event too: Volunteers will be masked, and everyone will be checked for vaccinations.  Volunteers are encouraged, but not required, to home-test right before the event and definitely not to come if they have a cough or fever. The two large packaging-floor spaces at the Church Complex will each form a self-contained unit for each shift with all operations — from mixing of bulk ingredients to weighing, sealing and boxing completed packages — conducted solely within each space.  And there’s adequate time left between shifts to allow for very careful sanitation of surfaces.

In past years Wi-ACT was assisted by the very hardworking and faithful Scouts of Troops 22 and 125, who moved the 50-pound bags of bulk ingredients into place the during the set-up shift (7:30-8:45 a.m.), but this year both troops will be away at a West Point Jamboree on the weekend of the event. So Wi-ACT is hoping that the Wilton Girl Scouts will step in and welcomes others as well. Volunteers for this set-up shift starting at 7:30 a.m. should call 203.762.2846.

Wi-ACT expresses its deep appreciation to all those who have generously contributed to this event and welcomes new sponsors that have joined this year, including Leading Sponsor ASML and Fairfield County Bank. Wi-ACT is also welcoming back continuing sponsors led by the Wilton Kiwanis Club and its members and Wilton Rotary. They also include Caraluzzi’s Markets, Garavel Autos, Gregory and Adams, P.C., Orem’s, the Little Pub and the Village Market, as well as numerous very generous individuals.

They join Wilton’s faith institutions in providing the financial support that makes this event possible. At the new higher price of 38 cents per meal paid by Wi-ACT to nonprofit Rise Against Hunger, Inc. for the bulk ingredients for these highly nutritious meals, it’s still quite a bargain.  Every dollar of donations goes to buy those bulk ingredients.

And as a special reward for Wi-ACT’s Rise Against Hunger volunteers, Wilton’s RISE Doughnuts will be providing them with its extraordinary doughnuts!

Event day is always a very special time of joyful community service doing hard but rewarding work with the knowledge that the day makes a real, and life-giving, difference to those children in greatest need around the world. It’s a real intergenerational experience, and one that Wi-ACT can guarantee you and your children (and grandchildren) will have a lot to say about at the dinner table on event night and likely continuing well after!

This was contributed by Stephen Hudspeth, a Wi-ACT Steering Committee member.