St. Francis students joins with group to pack food for Haiti

Johanna Jeudy recently had the chance to give something back to her friends and family in Duchity, Haiti.

The student at Wheaton's St. Francis High School spent part of the day packing food with hundreds of her classmates to help victims and others affected by the January earthquake in cooperation with Feed My Starving Children.

"It feels so good to help," she said, with a pronounced French accent.

While her village wasn't directly affected by the earthquake, it still is being hit hard with refugees from devastated areas. Jeudy is confident some of the food she packed will get to her village to help feed both residents and refugees.

The food, consisting of rice, soy, dehydrated vegetables, and chicken-flavored powder with vitamins, was carefully measured by the students and poured into plastic bags. Each bag costs 17 cents and will make six meals. The bags are weighed and then heat sealed for packing.

Feed My Starving Children is a Christian organization that is careful to bypass possibly corrupt officials by delivering its food directly into trusted hands in needy countries all around the world, said Samantha Tavola, a spokeswoman for the charity. Roughly 94 percent of donated money goes directly to buy food, she said.

St. Francis students packed food for more than 100,000 meals.

Two of the St. Francis students, Tom Murphy and Campbell Atkins, volunteered for the heavy lifting part of the food drive. They carried the completed boxes from the packing stations to a table for weighing.

Atkins said helping in the food drive helps build character and fulfills one of the school's goals to "get in touch with God." And Murphy added proudly, "We're the guys who make it all happen."

Even some of St. Francis' alumni got into the spirit. Jeremy Kohley just returned from a year at Xavier University and decided to drop by and help out. He used a hand truck to move pallets of filled boxes out to the truck for shipping.

The Feed My Starving Children food drive at St. Francis was the result of the school's Hope For Haiti festival in April, Principal Raeann Huhn said. That event, along with other fundraising efforts, raised more than $17,000 to purchase the food packed by the students.