“Pack the Dome,” the single largest volunteer event in the Cedar Valley, brings together volunteers to pack 80,000 bags of food collected for the Northeast Iowa Food Bank on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Many Iowa communities are organizing activities for Martin Luther King Jr. National Day of Service on Jan. 16 to honor the legacy of the civil rights leader through volunteerism.
One of the largest, at the UNI Dome in Cedar Falls, is “Pack the Dome 2023,” organized by the Volunteer Center of Cedar Valley in partnership with the Northeast Iowa Food Bank and the University of Northern Iowa’s Office of Community Engagement. They’re calling for volunteers (as young as 6) to help package food for the local BackPack Program, which serves 4,100 children at 159 schools across northeast Iowa each month. Every Friday afternoon, students receive kid-friendly meals and snacks they can eat over the weekend.
Last year, more than 1,000 volunteers pitched in. If you’d like to join, you can register online.
Iowa Stops Hunger is an ongoing Business Publications Corp. initiative to raise awareness of food insecurity in Iowa and inspire action to combat it.
