Last Friday, 85 students and faculty members volunteered to package more than 16,000 meals for the Pomona Valley Food Bank in an event hosted by Associated Students of Claremont McKenna College (ASCMC).
Ken Eckel CM ’28, community service committee chair, and Katherine Hodge CM ’27, academic affairs committee chair, organized the event with the goal of providing 20,000 meals to the Pomona Valley Food Bank.
Eckel said he hoped to build community and for volunteers to enjoy themselves while packing nutritious meals for those who face food insecurity.
“I want everyone to have a good time,” Eckel said before the event. “We have over 100 people signed up. We need lots of people for this to happen. If people come, that’s the main thing.”
Eckel and Hodge reached out to the Outreach Program of California to host their first meal-packing event at CMC. Hodge explained that the event needed careful planning for it to succeed.
“We do lots of events to encourage student [and] faculty bonding outside of the classroom and continue learning conversations in our community,” Hodge said. “This year, I thought about doing something bigger.”
The organizers planned the event expecting to prepare thousands of meals in four hours.
“We received the shipment yesterday … it’s definitely a lot of food,” Eckel said. “If everything runs smoothly … it should be feasible.”
Over two shifts, volunteers prepared hundreds of meal packages against a background of bright pop music and lively chatter in McKenna Auditorium. These packages translated into thousands of nutritious meals distributed to support Pomona residents who experience food insecurity.
CMC Student Body President Kylee Tevis CM ’26 participated in the meal packaging event and said events like these help local communities around the 5Cs.
“I would love to see more events like this,” Tevis said. “I think it’s a great reminder of how fortunate we are to attend a school with so many resources, and it’s especially meaningful to see students use those resources to support communities beyond our campus.”
Luna Turk CM ’28 volunteered to package food and expressed she was happy to meet other 5C students and have fun helping the community.
“While we were working, people were chatting and having fun, which made the whole process feel very communal,” Turk said. “I had a great time helping out for a good cause.”
Ellen Ketels, associate professor of literature at CMC, also volunteered and expressed a sense of pride regarding the event.
“It was great to see so many students, faculty and staff working together on this,” Ketels said. “The energy was high, and it was just so fun to have this chance to contribute to an important cause as a team.”
Although CMC fell short of their goal, Hodge considered the event a success and looks forward to hosting it again.
Eckel said he hoped to grow meal packing on campus and to potentially make the event an annual tradition.
“This was honestly a great test run for such a large event that has never happened before,” he said. “Perhaps if [we] expanded to other campuses … the event could even be larger than this year.”
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