Salisbury Rotary Club teams up with an international organization to help stop hunger

Every five seconds, somebody in the world passes away from hunger.

21,000 people pass away from hunger or hunger-related illness a day and equals to 7.76 million people.

Beyond that, there's 795 million people at any one time that are just hungry in the world.

Because of those striking numbers, Joe Gautier, the program coordinator of the international hunger relief organization called Rise Against Hunger, teamed up with Salisbury's Rotary Club to help stop the epidemic through local efforts.

On Saturday, April 8, 2017, many hands assisted these efforts as over 45 volunteers prepped meals.

Volunteers start at the funnel stations where they put it in rice, soy, dehydrated vegetables, and vitamin packets into a bag.

From there, they are brought over to a scale, where they are adjusted for weight. From there they seal the bags and then they are brought over to the boxing stations to be put in boxes, sealed up and then stocked.

The president of Salisbury's Rotary Club, Marie Calafirua, says each bag contains six meals and they created 3,000 bags, in total creating 20,000 meals plus.

And beyond the help from Rise Against Hunger, The Rotary Club was also assisted through a grant.

The Rotary Club of Salisbury applied for a District 7630 grant and they were funded80% of the cost of the event.

The meals are sent off to 37 countries and Calafirua says it is an amazing feeling to create steps locally to stop hunger worldwide.

The Rotary Club will not know where those bags will go until Rise Against Hunger has up to 300,000 meals created.

We are told they will find out in about three weeks.