St. Paul’s Episcopal Church hosted a food-packaging event on Wednesday for Stop Hunger Now, an international organization dedicated to ending world hunger.

The packaging event consists of assembling meals that will be shipped to areas of famine, disaster or conflict around the world.

The community turnout for the event that more than 60 volunteers participated in. Thanks to their support, the Stop Hunger Now agency now has 10,000 meals – packaged in less than two hours – to send to people in need.

The meals consist of dehydrated vegetables, rice, soy and a special flavoring developed by the Heinz Micronutrient Campaign, which contains 23 vitamins and minerals. The shelf life of the meals is two years.

In addition to their nutritious value, the meals are cost-effective; each package costs only 29 cents to produce, and St. Paul’s raised $2,900 dollars to pay for the 10,000 meals at the event.

According to a release from St. Paul’s, Stop Hunger Now will notify the church on the destination of the meals they packaged Wednesday, so they will know which people they were able to help.

“The boxes are labeled with our information, so we know where they are going,” said one St. Paul’s volunteer, “The meals we packaged went to Haiti last year.”

This is the second consecutive year the church hosted the food-packaging event.

Volunteers from St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, the city of Bogalusa, the PRC National Honor Society, and Boy Scout Troop 198 participated in the event. St. Paul’s parishioners and many other volunteers from the community attended as well.

“We were so heartened by the community’s support,” said the volunteer.