Volunteers leading the Meals from the Heartland food packaging event at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic School in Webster City include, from left; Principal Theresa Schleisman, Deacon Dan Hurt, Development Director Heidi Tesdahl, and Religion teacher Jan Reisetter.

Teaching children that faith and good works go hand in hand is the focus of an upcoming Lenten program at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic School in Webster City.

In 2024, students gathered shoes for children in Ghana for children who must walk to school barefooted. This year, students are bringing their volunteer work closer to home and inviting the community to join them in an effort to battle food insecurity.

“We try to do a Lenten project every year,” Heidi Tesdahl, development director at St. Thomas Aquinas, said. “This year, our school theme is ‘We are the hands of Christ.'”

Putting their hands to work is part of the broader education of both faith and community at St. Thomas. The highly popular shoe project began when Father Francis Anane gave a homily during the weekly children’s Mass about the everyday living conditions of school children in his home country.

“The kids really picked up on Father Anane talking about kids in his home country not having shoes,” Tesdahl recalled.

Students were so touched by that personal account that they wanted to do something to help. “We filled six to eight large boxes with shoes and shipped them to Ghana,” Tesdhal said.

While the United States has social safety nets often lacking in other nations, there is still hunger in America — and it is growing. That’s why students this year are leading an effort to help feed people here at home and encourage community members to join with them.

“We really see a need locally for this,” Tesdahl said.

Working with their sister parish, St. Mary’s in Williams, St. Thomas Aquinas received a $5,000 grant from the Catholic Foundation of the Archdiocese of Dubuque. The goal is to raise local contributions to match that one to one for a total project of $10,000, working in cooperation with Meals from the Heartland, based out of West Des Moines.

The meal packaging event is slated for Wednesday, March 26. Students will be participating, and local volunteers are definitely needed to help.

Tesdhal would love to see other church groups, service clubs, or even businesses come and join the effort. It promises to be a fun and rewarding event for all involved.

“We will need up to 200 volunteers for what we anticipate being able to raise,” Tesdhal said. “If we are successful, we will be able to provide over 50,000 meals. Our local food pantries will be able to keep as much as they want.”

Volunteers will scoop and sort and package healthy foods that are distributed locally first, and then throughout others areas served by Meals from the Heartland.

“They do two different meals; one is a taco mac, which is like macaroni and cheese, and then there is a rice meal,” Tesdahl explained. “Our local food pantries have said the taco mac is very popular.”

Meals from the Heartland estimates that one in six Iowa children experience hunger, and 13 million children across the United States live in homes where food isn’t always a given — where food insecurity is a way of life. Around the world, some 66 million children go to school hungry each day. Meals from the Heartland is unique in that it serves children at all three levels: locally, nationally and globally.

The food packaging event will get underway at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 26, when volunteers begin unloading the truck and prepping the area for food packaging. Students fill the first shift of meal packaging, but volunteers are needed to help them and then take over in the late afternoon and evening hours.

To see the shifts available, or to sign up, contact the church office at 515-832-1190, or scan the QR code with this story. For parish members, a hyperlink to the sign-up can be found with the latest online bulletin. Financial donations are also welcome to help make sure they match the original grant and can provide as many meals as possible.

“We really hope to raise that $5,000 and we’re not there yet,” Tesdahl said.

Feeding neighbors here in Iowa can be a truly ecumenical effort this Lenten season.

“We want to get that message out that everyone is welcome to help in whatever way they can.”