The Million Meal Project

, a local nonprofit with a mission to rally the Westchester County community in New York to fund, package and distribute 1 million meals to families in need all over the world in partnership with Rise Against Hunger and other local organizations.

The Blumberg family from Edgemont, New York, started the Million Meal Project to engage their community in packaging 1 million meals, and they recently reached that milestone! Their efforts have helped alleviate global hunger; the volunteer-packaged meals have been distributed to communities affected by food insecurity in Uganda, Vietnam, the Philippines, Timor-Leste and more.

In June 2022, our local civic organization in Westchester, New York, hosted a meal packaging event with Rise Against Hunger, where 50 volunteers in our community packaged 10,000 meals. As parents, we had been looking to no avail for an impactful, hands-on community service opportunity for our kids when they were younger. So, we started the Million Meal Project to package 1 million meals with Rise Against Hunger over five years.

We spent the summer of 2022 planning, creating a website, devising a fundraising strategy, developing partnerships with our school district, building a mailing list and finding spaces to host our events. We held our first event, a soft launch, in October, followed soon after by our first community event right before Thanksgiving. We were blown away by the response from the community, with over 400 volunteers showing up to pack over 50,000 meals.

In 2023, we held 16 packaging events, boxing almost 475,000 meals. 2024 grew again, with 19 events and an additional 465,000 meals. On December 14, 2024, we packaged our millionth meal, three years ahead of schedule. As my family wraps up our goal, we are looking to find another family in our area interested in taking over this project.