St. Joseph students make a difference around the globe

Oct. 7—St. Joseph School District employees, volunteers and Coleman Elementary School students worked together Friday to pack 30,000 meals to be distributed around the world.

The district teamed up with Numana, Inc., a nonprofit public charity located in El Dorado, Kansas, that works as an international hunger relief organization.

"This is our first time hosting a Numana event here at Coleman Elementary School," said Heather Gladhart, principal at Coleman. "It's an opportunity for our kids to pack and sack meals that are going to be sent to other countries to feed those that are in need."

Julie Dillion, behavior interventionist at Coleman, was inspired to bring the meal packing event to students after attending an event with Numana at another school.

"I contacted them just to see if there's a possibility for us to do the meal-packing event," Dillion said. "The meals (are) 39 cents each, which doesn't sound bad but then they told us that we could pack 30,000 meals at the cost of $11,700 and that we needed to come up with that for us to do it, that's pretty difficult for us to raise."

It was through an anonymous donation of $10,000 that Coleman Elementary was able to host this event.

"We then had to raise $1,700 that was kindly donated from Brooner Construction to reach the $11,700," Dillion said. "So, we were able to do this for our kids. This allows our kids to have a part in serving other people."

All grade levels were able to participate in the meal-packing event throughout the school day.

"It's set up in an assembly-line fashion," Dillion said. "We have kids that dump in the rice, dump in the beans, dump in the vitamins and then they pass it down and they weigh it. It has to be a certain weight so, there's a little math involved there too. Then, they pass it down and they seal it."

Smiles lit up the students' faces as they celebrated every box packed by running up on the stage and hitting a gong.

"They've all been very excited," Dillion said. "I love the teamwork that's going on and how the big kids are helping the little kids. They're all honored to be a part of all of it so, it's really neat."

Abigail Burgess, a third-grader at Coleman, said it felt good doing something for other people.

"I was really happy because I knew that I would get good karma and it was a good thing to do," Burgess said.

Rachael Topper, events manager for Numana, said involving young kids in these events leaves an ever-lasting impact.

"If you plant that heart of service at a young age, when they're my age, they're excited about changing the world and letting them know that they're the easiest kids to bring in because they want to have that impact. They want to go home and say 'I changed the world today,'" Topper said.

Topper said 80% of the work Numana does is inside churches and the other 20% is in schools and businesses.

"It's always growing," Topper said. "I think schools are learning and adapting with the times where focus isn't so much on reading, writing and arithmetic as it is on developing people who are going to be sent out into the world that can read, write and do math, but who care about the people next to them."

Topper encouraged the students to write messages on the boxes they packed.

"These boxes actually go overseas, and so in people's darkest time, this is what they're going to get," Topper said.

Dillion is hopeful to continue these meal-packing events in the future school years.

"Finding those donors is going to be important but it's such an awesome opportunity for our kids, and so far, they're really loving it," Dillion said.