Stop Hunger Now: YD Darron Stover's Birthday Present

Feeding the hungry is his present

Darron Stover invited his friends to celebrate his 35th birthday Saturday packaging food for the hungry at a warehouse in North Raleigh, and he received more than he wished for.

His friends, fellow Fairmont United Methodist Church members, and even people he didn't know from a group of Cary Indian Princesses and a youth choir from Blacksburg, Va., joined together to prepare approximately 25,400 meals, surpassing his target of 20,000.

"I'm just absolutely in awe of the people and them showing up like that," the North Raleigh resident said.

The food was prepared for Stop Hunger Now, a nonprofit international hunger relief organization started in 1998 and based in Raleigh.

He'd asked his friends to help package food because 30,000 people die every day of hunger and hunger-related diseases, he said. Many people are unaware of how pervasive hunger is, he said.

"These people die every single day," said Stover, an investment advisory representative. "It's like having a tsunami every week."

The problem may seem overwhelming, he said, but Stop Hunger Now's efforts are making a difference.

"It feeds people who aren't as fortunate as us," said Jacob Kintz, 9, who volunteered with his family from St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Cary. "It might help improve the world."

By late Saturday morning, 110 volunteers were busy preparing bags of what might best be described as dehydrated chicken casserole. Teams gathered around funnels and took turns dumping soy protein, dehydrated vegetables, rice and powdered chicken stock with vitamins into plastic bags that were weighed and heat-sealed. Other volunteers counted, sorted, stacked and loaded the meals into boxes that will be shipped around the world.

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