Between 250 and 300 volunteers are expected to turn out tomorrow, Thursday, March 9, for the seventh annual Fountain Hills Food Packing event.

Volunteers will spend two hours from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the Community Center where they will package dehydrated food for refugees, disaster victims, homeless and low-income households.

Anyone willing to work on the packing lines is welcome.

“We’re looking at packing 80,000 meals in a two-hour period,” said Don Corey, co-chair with his wife, Pat, of New Journey Lutheran Church.

Contributions for the purchase of bulk dry ingredients also are welcome. By using bulk ingredients and volunteers to do the packing, the cost of the fortified meal is reduced to 15 cents each. A donation of $100 pays for 667 meals; $500 buys 3,333 meals.

Dehydrated meals are shipped in bulk to wherever they are needed around the world in cooperation with the international relief program, Food for Kidz. Recent destinations have included Sierra Leone, Haiti, and Afghanistan.

Other dehydrated meals will be distributed in Arizona by groups that feed the hungry, including the local Extended Hands Food Bank; AZ Brainfood, which serves school children in the Valley, and other organizations.

The Food Pack has been held in Fountain Hills for six years. During that time, about 300,000 meals have been packed.

When the program began, the food packages contained only one type of food – a dried soup mix with rice, vegetables, soy protein and vitamins. A second meal variety of oatmeal with sugar, cinnamon and vitamins has been added.

When several hundred exuberant volunteers pack the meals, sometimes ingredients get spilled. Even that spillage won’t be wasted. It will be swept up for consumption by goats.

In addition to the Coreys, the steering committee includes Ellen and Larry Woodlan of the Church of the Ascension and Keith and Penny Junk of Christ’s Church of Fountain Hills.