4/26/2010 Celia Elliott
Physics alumnus Gregory Damhorst was one of the organizers of last weekend's Million Meals for Haiti event in Champaign.
Written by Celia Elliott
Physics alumnus (BS, Dec 2009) and current NPL staff member Gregory Damhorst was one of the organizers of last weekend’s Million Meals for Haiti event in Champaign. In celebration of National Volunteer Week, Interfaith in Action, a registered student organization at the University of Illinois, worked with the Salvation Army and thousands of Champaign County volunteers to assemble 1 million packages of food for Haitians made homeless by January’s earthquake. Greg is the former president of Interfaith in Action.
"The incredible thing about this project was that it was just a handful of students who got the ball rolling," Damhorst said on Monday, after the last of the mountain of packages had been assembled. "I started making phone calls, and we found out that the minimum event would require 20,000 meals at $0.30 each, so our student organization set out to raise the $6,000 necessary. The idea caught on with such force, however, that we ended up doing 1,000,000 meals through $300,000+ support from the Salvation Army World Service Office. It’s a lesson to students everywhere that you can make a difference with the right amount of enthusiasm and persistence."
The ingredients—rice, soy, and dried vegetables fortified with vitamins—were supplied in bulk by Kansas-based Numana, Inc. and repackaged into six-serving bags by the 5,000+ local volunteers. The U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division will airlift the food to Haiti, where the Salvation Army will distribute it to the millions of homeless and hungry people in the impoverished nation, which was devastated by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake on January 12, 2010.
In addition to Damhorst, Physics faculty Lance Cooper, Nigel Goldenfeld, David Hertzog, and Alan Nathan were spotted as volunteers, as were graduate students Brendan Kiburg, Sara Knaack, and Noah Schroeder.