posted on Friday, April 8, 2016 in News
A group of twenty employees from AMVC volunteered at Meals for the Heartland in Des Moines last week. The employees that participated are part of the swine production leadership development program at AMVC, where they are strengthening and developing their skills to become successful in future management roles. Quarterly, this group comes together for training and to embrace the values that AMVC upholds.
It was an eye opening experience for Chris Bylund, an AMVC leadership development program (LDP) employee and assistant manager at Hatteras, LLC in Audubon, “I have never participated in a project like this before and to be able to help feed the people that need it the most, was an awesome experience. I help feed the world every day by producing pork for everyone to eat, but nothing like this.”
Meals for the Heartland takes bulk food items and with the help of volunteers, turn those ingredients into packaged meals. AMVC employees know that solving world hunger is an ongoing problem that cannot be solved in a single day or by a single task.
According to Dakota Christensen, AMVC LDP employee and assistant manager at Roanoke, LLC, a producer owned sow farm in Audubon, believes that every little bit helps in supplying food for our hungry world.
“I think about feeding the world on a daily basis. Every time I make a good production decision I think of it in terms of how many more pigs can make it to harvest and feed that many more people.”
After the packaging session, the group was given a guided tour of the warehouse. Bylund and Christensen were both amazed at the amount of bulk inventory Meals for the Heartland will be using and the number of people that are impacted with those ingredients.
Last year, Meals for the Heartland packaged 10,658,144 meals and were distributed across thirteen countries and central Iowa food banks.
