Fernandina Beach Volunteers Pack 46,000 Meals for Food-Insecure Nassau County Students

By Mike Lednovich/Editor

More than 300 volunteers converged Saturday morning at the Atlantic Recreation Center with a singular mission: pack 46,000 meals in about three hours for food-insecure children and families in Nassau County.

They beat that goal by a wide margin because they've perfected the assembly production line to pack and box the meals. The key, officials said, was in setting up the Joan Bean Auditorium before the volunteers took the floor.

“We thought it was going to take two hours (for setup),” said Pete Stevenson, Project Manager for Hunger Fight. “We did it in an hour and seven minutes with a very good setup team.”

About 305 volunteers staffed 30 production tables — 10 positions per table — forming a tightly coordinated assembly line that transformed bulk ingredients into sealed meal bags bound for the organization’s Jacksonville warehouse before being redistributed back to Nassau County.

Stevenson said this marks his eighth year organizing the meal packing event locally and the second year working with Hunger Fight after switching vendors. This year, he said, the effort is squarely focused on local impact.

Project Manager Pete Stevenson helps volunteers pack meals.

“As it stands right now, 90% of what we’re packing up today, which would be about 46,000 meals, will end up going to Barnabas and go in the school backpack program,” Stevenson said.

The program, managed by the Barnabas Center of Fernandina Beach in partnership with the Nassau County School District, provides food to students who may not have reliable meals at home, particularly on weekends.

Meals packed Saturday will be trucked to Hunger Fight’s warehouse in downtown Jacksonville, then shipped monthly to Barnabas based on need. Stevenson said Amazon has agreed to transport the food from the warehouse to Barnabas at no cost.

Setup began at 7 a.m. A 20-person team — including nine Hunger Fight staff members and volunteers from Sunrise Rotary — completed the room layout before the general volunteer force entered.

“Basically, we didn’t let anybody come into the room until the production lines were actually completely set up,” Stevenson said.

Hunger Fight redesigned the assembly layout after last year’s event.

“They found that what we did last year was somewhat confusing,” Stevenson said. “And so they redesigned it about two weeks ago. So it took them a part of two weeks to get everything laid out the way it is. And it’s worked a lot better.”

The result: controlled, high-volume output in just over an hour.

Volunteers packaged a variety of shelf-stable meals, including breakfast cereal, macaroni and cheese, and rice dishes.

Volunteers assemble ingredients for meal packages.

“We have a breakfast cereal package,” Stevenson said. “And each one of the bags has four meals in it. And that four meals is less than a thousand calories for the four meals.”

The specific meal mix varies based on inventory needs at the warehouse.

The event cost approximately $20,000, funded entirely through local donations.

Major contributors included American Legion Post 54, the Isle of Eight Flags Shrimp Festival, the Kiwanis Club, Lions Club, three Rotary Clubs in Nassau County, and area churches including First Presbyterian, Memorial United Methodist, St. Michael’s Catholic and St. Peter’s Episcopal. Individual donors also contributed.

Hunger Fight is headquartered in Jacksonville and operates another large facility in Utah. The nonprofit serves more than 16,000 children weekly across its network.

Stevenson said the meal program addresses both chronic and acute hunger.

“There’s a worldwide objective to eliminate hunger,” he said. “You want to remember hunger is not something we plan on. You’ve basically got chronic and acute forms of hunger.”

In Nassau County, approximately 9% of residents and more than 13% of children live below the federal poverty line, according to Hunger Fight data.

By late morning, the last sealed boxes were loaded onto trucks, and the gymnasium floor that had buzzed with “planned chaos” was quiet again — the work of hundreds distilled into pallets of meals destined for local children who need them most.