On Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Tilton students and staff turned what is typically a ‘day off’ into a ‘day on’ through several labors of love — approximately 30,000 of them. To honor and commemorate the civil rights leader, Tilton School partnered with Meals of Hope, a nonprofit organization created to assist food-insecure communities across the country. Together the two groups packaged, measured, sealed, and stocked shelf-safe meals, ready for the New Hampshire Food Bank to distribute.
Spearheaded by the Black Student Union (BSU) club at Tilton —and made possible with support from alum and trustee Mark Rudd ’69 — the community divided into 11 stations, each in a race to package as many boxes as possible. Teams were tasked with carefully measuring ingredients, weighing the completed meal bags, sealing them for transport, and tallying how many meals they packaged. “It was pretty stressful planning the event,” says BSU member Isaac Carter ’24. “But everything turned out better than we could have imagined. We had been planning this event since the start of the year, so a lot of thought went into everything.”
In one afternoon, Rams packaged 32,832 meals that will be delivered across New Hampshire, helping the New Hampshire Food Bank Network to provide nutritious meals to our neighbors. “As for the event itself, we completely smashed our initial goal,” Carter explains.
Meals for Hope works to supply families with meals rich in vitamins, minerals, and proteins to bridge the gap that food leaves in communities that do not have access to it. According to BSU faculty advisor Maura Veilleux, the meals that Tilton packaged will reach dozens of communities across the state, with the potential to impact thousands of families.
“We are looking forward to continually making Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day a day of service at Tilton, and next year we’re hoping to have more events throughout the year to help the local community,” Carter says. After a day filled with music, laughter, and lighthearted competition, at the close of the event, several community members walked away asking, “when can we do this again?”