Submitted by Susanna Natti of the Bedford Rotary Club
April 25th, Global Pay It Forward Day: Bedford Rotary’s first “Pay It Forward Day”, a day for random acts of kindness, culminated with a meal packaging event in partnership with Stop Hunger Now, an international hunger relief agency founded in 1998. 14,904 meals bound for schools and orphanages in Haiti and Zambia were packaged in just two hours by a diverse army of volunteers in the gymnasium of the John Glenn Middle School.
Mike Sullivan, the program manger for Stop Hunger Now/New England directed volunteers to different stations for assembling ingredients, weighing packets, vacuum sealing the plastic bags, and then boxing them, 36 packets to a box. Sullivan had spoken at the Rotary Club and one of the members, Linda Cargiulo, championed the idea of working with Stop Hunger Now.
Periodically, Sullivan would announce the number of meals packaged. “Over 3,000 meals!” A gong was sounded for each 1,000 meals. Would the goal of 15,000 meals be met? At 7:22, the announced number was 10,800 meals. At eight o’clock, the final tally was just shy of 15,000, but Sulllivan was thrilled with the results. Rotary President Peter Colgan, who brought the idea of Pay It Forward to the club, reported that Mike described the Bedford packaging event as one of the happiest he’s experienced.
Nine-year-old Willie Fitzgerald, who was a dynamo transferring boxes from station to station said about the evening: “I think this is great because we’re helping other countries – and I love it”.
Volunteers ranged from the very young to the very senior. There were Rotarians from Bedford and Concord, students from the John Glenn Middle School and from Bedford High School, a crew from the Doubletree Bedford Glen Hotel, and Bedford residents who came to help because they’d heard about it. Paul Wittman had read about it in The Bedford Citizen; he was stationed at a table with high school and middle school students and thought they were “super”. Citizen of the Year Bobbie Ennis was helping out.
Peter Colgan, reached after the event, was tired but very happy about the success of the event; he was impressed with the happy energy in the room and the amazing productivity of the assembled volunteers. “I’m happy that Pay It Forward was launched in the schools and that this event was brought to the community of Bedford.
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