Volunteers pack 50,000 meals on Black Friday

Malls and big box stores were filled with shoppers looking to score the best deals Friday morning.

But inside the Sycamore at Mallow Run, a day-after-Thanksgiving tradition of a different kind was unfolding meal by meal.

About 270 volunteers came together for the annual Pack Friday event. The service-centered morning helped generate 50,000 packages of high-nutrition meals to be distributed to the hungry throughout central Indiana.

Spending time together as a family to help the needy made for an impactful and satisfying start to the holiday season.

“Everybody is full of the giving spirit, and it makes you feel overwhelmed with gratitude for everybody,” said Erin Hartman, a southside Indianapolis resident who took part Friday.

Pack Away Hunger is a non-profit organization based on the southside of Indianapolis focused on improving the lives of children and others who suffer from hunger and malnutrition. The group created nutritious meal kits that can be shipped around the world and easily prepared with nothing more than a pot of boiling water.

Packing events are organized throughout Indiana during the year, and those meals go to hungry people both locally and around the world.

But all the meals put together on Pack Friday go to hungry people in central Indiana. Some will go to organizations such as Midwest Food Bank and Gleaners Food Bank, while others will go to local public schools where they will feed hungry children.

Nearly all of the meals will serve people in Johnson, Marion, Boone and Morgan counties, said Abby Harlan, executive director of Pack Away Hunger.

“This is our favorite time of year. We’re all very lucky because we get to engage diverse groups of people and businesses and churches and schools and communities to come together and pack food for people who need it,” she said. “But this event is particularly special because it directly affects central Indiana.”

The idea behind Pack Friday was born in 2013. A group of Pack Away Hunger volunteers and donors, searching as an alternative to Black Friday, decided to put their energy behind something positive.

They met at midnight in Pack Away Hunger’s headquarters to put together meals.

“The whole idea was to do something of service, not commercialized and perpetuating the consumerism of Black Friday,” Harlan said. “We thought we’d counter that with a day where families and student groups and organizations could do service together instead of spending money.”

Since then, the event has been an effort bringing hundreds of people together in communities throughout central Indiana. Pack Fridays are held in different locations every year, and would put together between 70,000 and 100,000 meals each time.

The event was held in Johnson County for the first time in 2019, when Pack Away Hunger partnered with Mallow Run, one of its longtime collaborators. The event was so successful organizers had wanted to repeat it last year, but had to shift to a virtual fundraising Pack Friday due to the pandemic.

Together with a grant from the TEGNA Foundation in Indianapolis, the event was able to return this year. The response from families, organizations and other volunteers was overwhelming.

“We have quite a few families who join as a team. They fund raise together, and come to pack meals together,” Harlan said. “It’s all ages, multi-generational, everyone wanted to take part.”

The O’Haver family — parents Lindsey and Matt, and their children Olivia, 13, and Kyden, 10 —started doing Pack Friday in 2019. The goal was to do something as a family that would benefit others in the community, Lindsey O’Haver said.

“It’s a nice way for us to give back and to be able to do it as a family and teach our kids how important it is to not only be thankful for what we have, but to think about others who don’t have the same thing,” she said.

Even with the event going on as normal this year, organizers needed to tweak the operations to ensure the safety of volunteers and those taking part. Meal-packing stations have been spread out to encourage safe distancing, and while hairnets and gloves have always been a requirement for the events, everyone had to wear a mask, Harlan said.

Those adjustments did not impact the enthusiasm and excitement that volunteers showed on Friday.

At 12 different assembly lines, volunteers churned out package after package of meals to help their neighbors. They scooped rice, dried vegetables, a nutrient packet and soy into a funnel that filled up individual plastic bags with the base for the meals. Those bags were then weighed, sealed, flattened and stacked, ready to be packed into boxes.

Music played over the Sycamore’s speakers, and participants danced and tried to fill more and more bags. Every so often, the clank of a cowbell rang through the space, indicating a station had filled a box with meals.

“The atmosphere is amazing. The people who show up here are awesome. It’s grown so much since we started doing it,” Hartman said.

She had been coming to Pack Friday with her mother, father, son and daughter for the past five years. Though only her mother and son were able to join her this year, being able to do something significant for the hungry in the community was a special feeling.

“We just like the opportunity to give back to those who aren’t as fortunate,” Hartman said.