Volunteering to Fight Hunger Since 2008
The inspiration for the Meals from the Heartland effort began with a 2007 food-packaging event held during Lent by a church in West Des Moines, Iowa. The success of that event encouraged leaders to organize a community-wide food-packaging event that would involve more volunteers to feed hungry children and families. It was that leap of faith that brought Meals from the Heartland to Des Moines in 2008, resulting in 12,000 volunteers who packaged more than 4 million meals in a week’s time at our first Annual Hunger Fight.
The success of that first event led to the development of a year-round meal packaging effort. Thousands of volunteers now come together to package millions of meals year-round.
1 in 7 Iowa children don’t have enough to eat
66 million children worldwide go to school hungry
Every 10 seconds a child dies of hunger-related issues
If you'd like to request a speaker to talk about Meals from the Heartland to your organization, school or church, please contact us.
Impact
Since 2008, Meals from the Heartland has provided over 165 million meals to the hungry in Iowa and around the world.
- 2008 — 4,028,136
- 2009 — 4,029,934
- 2010 — 8,084,698
- 2011 — 6,083,811
- 2012 — 7,782,156
- 2013 — 8,764,560
- 2014 — 10,658,144
- 2015 — 15,727,824
- 2016 — 18,144,000
- 2017 — 23,049,000
- 2018 — 19,484,280
- 2019 — 23,112,864
- 2020 — 19,007,568
