Million Meal Pack: Volunteers pack 1 million meals for families in need

All right. Helping put food on the table for Wisconsin families. That's the goal of a big event happening today at State Fair Park. Yeah. Our Andrew Muzu joining us live this morning to tell us about the Million Meal Pack is what it's called. Andrew, this is such a great way to help out folks in this community, man. Good morning. Yeah, and it's going to be a heavy lift, but it's pretty much all hands on deck that we're experiencing here. And I will be honest, I was like, OK, this morning we're going to a Pick 'n Save, a Metro Market. No, we are here at State Fairgrounds because look how massive this entire facility is. That just goes to show how many people are going to be showing up today, making that difference. To talk more about the difference that's being made here, we're joined by Mr. Aaron Rice of Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin. Before this hit, we were going through some of those numbers. So let's start off there as far as what we're seeing, and then we can get more into the impacts being made here. But what are we seeing as far as hunger goes in our area? Yeah, need continues to rise. You know, we were talking last year that approximately 1 in 10 individuals were facing food insecurity. This year we're talking about 1 in 8 individuals facing food insecurity right here at home. Here in Milwaukee County, you're looking at about 1 in 4 kids who face food insecurity every single day. Obviously that need continues to rise and that's part of the reason we're out here today. Yeah, one million meals being packed. Tell me about what people can expect here, especially with all of these. I mean obviously you have sort of this station here, but you have many different tables across this entire facility. Yeah, so we're going to have over 1,400 volunteers. In this facility today, packing 1 million meals, about 240,000 of those meals are going to stay right here at home in eastern Wisconsin, while others are going to go out and support part of the rest of the state, along with northern Illinois. So, incredibly impactful day, incredibly excited to see what happens. Yeah, and of course, we've heard about Pick 'n Save being involved, Metro Market, Mariano's, but for Feeding America, obviously, I feel like you guys are... This is what you guys are all about, making sure that people are being fed. It's in the name. So how does that make you feel to be able to be part of Feeding America, but also you're seeing these different groups join in on this, especially with, I'm hearing a semi-truck full of goods and materials and food being able to be transported out. Yeah, so we'll have a semi-truck full of product that's gonna be heading to Our warehouse this afternoon, which is incredibly exciting, but you know, every time we ask for help here in Milwaukee or in eastern Wisconsin at all, the community shows up and that's exactly how we have to do this. We know that we can't do it alone, which is why we have such incredible partnerships. Yeah, and it's going to be very exciting to be able to highlight that all morning long. We have a list of special guests, leaders, organizers, volunteers, all those things, sort of illustrating the all-hands-on-deck, as you were mentioning. So a lot more that this will come from Donovan and Derricka, but I know that this is definitely going to be something that we'll be able to highlight all morning long, the impact being made right here in our area. It'll fill a great need in Milwaukee and surrounding communities. Thank you, Andrew, so much, brother.