Oologah-Talala High School Students Box Up Meals For Haiti

Craig Day, News On 6

OOLOGAH, Oklahoma -- Students in one Green Country town got a break from class Monday. Instead, they got a getting a lesson in serving people in need.

With their hair nets and hearts to serve others, some Oologah-Talala High School students spent Monday making a difference.

"It's like a reality check you know," said Britton Bishop, a freshman.

They mixed up 20,000 meals to send to the hungry in Haiti.

"We eat like three meals a day and this may be their only one for you don't even know how long," said Jessie Wright, a junior.

So several hundred students put together a mixture of rice, beans, soy and vitamins. Bagging it and boxing it for Numana, an international relief organization.  The food will help earthquake victims, still in desperate need.

"I hope it makes a big difference in these kids' lives," Bishop said.

Events like this just don't happen. It started with Senior Kristy McCreary. A while back she was one of the volunteers wearing a hair net and gloves at a similar event in Kansas City.

"I was like, this is awesome," she said. "And I was like, I want to bring this to my community, to my school."

For two weeks, McCreary and other students have been raising the $6,000 needed to buy the ingredients for the meals. They talked to businesses, even called people at random from the phone book, and raised about half. An anonymous donor provided the rest.

"This is the only way we can help. We donate our time and all of the high school students get involved and Numana takes it down to Haiti and that's how we make a difference," McCreary said.

So with community support, combined with a lot of teenaged energy, they're making it happen, making a difference. One scoop, one bag, one meal at a time.

According to Numana's blog, each meal produced, packaged, and shipped by Numana costs 30 cents to create.