Our Last Event
Held Saturday & Sunday, November 4-5, 2023 — Packing over 200,000 Meals
Our Event History
What began in 2012 as a congregational mission project initiated by a young man at St. Matthew Lutheran Church has blossomed into a bi-annual community-wide service event. Packing in 2023 marked the Sixth Hanover Area Community Meal Packing Event. On Saturday and Sunday, November 4-5, more than 700 volunteers packed over 200,000 meals in four packing sessions in about 6 hours. On what was once again proclaimed by the mayor as “Rise Against Hunger in Hanover Day,” a sea container was filled to the brim and headed to the Port at New York before heading to the Philippines. Residents of the area from local businesses, service organizations, churches and neighborhoods again joined together to help feed school-age children. It was quite an event!
To date, over $150,000 has been raised and more than one-half million meals have been packed in the six Events held thus far. Our meals have helped to feed children in Haiti, Columbia, Malawi, Liberia, Burundi, Zambia and, this year, the Philippines.
Based on the success of past events and the enthusiasm of participants, young and old, plans are already underway for our next Packing Event in 2025. Due to the incredible success of our past packing events and the unmatched enthusiasm and support we have received from the people of southcentral Pennsylvania, Hanover Against Hunger is currently reviewing ways to cooperate with local area food banks to expand its reach and help address the food insecurities of those closer to home.
The need is there and is now greater than ever, both here and abroad. We continue to seek new and creative ways to help fund our efforts and encourage anyone who shares our passion to consider working with us, either on the Board, planning committees or as volunteers in our efforts to provide life-saving meals to those in need.
Anyone interested in helping to involve your church, business, organization or service club or to assist as an individual with planning, fund raising, publicity, financial management or other activities, please complete the form on this website.
A Look Back to a Past Event
Rise Against Hunger partnered with Family Legacy to distribute the 113,000 meals packed at our 2018 Hanover Area Community Meal Packing Event in Lusaka, Zambia. Family Legacy has pursued a mission to create a positive change in the desperate reality of the orphaned and vulnerable children of Lusaka.
Due to the scourge of HIV/AIDS and the extreme poverty that breeds hopelessness and despair, Zambia had become a community predominately comprised of children. In fact, to this day, nearly half of Zambia’s population are children age 14 or under. Zambia was a land in crisis and its children were quickly becoming a lost and abandoned generation. Dedicated to the goal of changing Zambia one child at a time, Family Legacy is recasting the future of this nation. Their work provides for almost 15,000 orphaned and vulnerable children’s lives to be transformed through one of their twenty-four Legacy Academy Christian schools or a high-quality government school. Among these, more than 700 of the most vulnerable children live in full-time care at the Tree of Life Children’s Village.