Chicago-area students pack 30,000 meals to fight hunger

COOK COUNTY, Ill. - School may be out, but it was a day of service in the suburbs for hundreds of students.

What we know:

Forest Park Middle School was bustling with activity on Monday, as students and their parents packaged 30,000 meals for local food banks and veterans.

Inside, they measured, poured, sealed and stamped the individual bags of pasta meals.

The effort was organized by the nonprofit Feed6. They plan events like this all year, but this one was especially important.

What they're saying:

"It makes me feel amazing because it’s great to know I can help all these people just by scooping macaroni or putting stuff in bags, and it just makes me feel really good about myself," said 13-year-old Elouise Billingsley.

Maya Pesanti is volunteering with her mom.

"Me and my mom wanted to this because a lot of people don’t have food, and they deserve to have food," she said.

Bill Kanatas founded Feed6 more than a decade ago.

"We’ve been around for about 14 years. We are part of a larger organization called ‘Outreach.’ We’ve packed nine-million meals here in the Chicagoland area, giving those meals to the [Greater] Chicago Food Depository and Northern Illinois Food Bank, Salvation Army, smaller food agencies and, hopefully, we’ll continue to do this for the next 14 years," he said.

Rachelle Ernst helped plan the event with the district.

"It grew out of a community engagement project with our PTO where we wanted to create opportunities for our families and community to connect to support our most vulnerable in our area. So we started at 1,600 meals and today we’re packing 30,000," she said.

What you can do:

If you’d like to help, Feed6 organizes events all year round. Head to www.Feed6.org to learn more.