In the 1990s the UN worked to establish 8 millennium development goals (MDGs) adopted in September of 2000 when 189 countries and 147 heads of state signed the Millennium Declaration with the goal of providing a global blueprint to improve human living standards by 2015. The MDG era officially concluded in 2016, leading to measurable successes. While the initiatives achieved substantial progress, the results were unevenly distributed across regions.
The first MDG was to eliminate extreme poverty and hunger, specifically to halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger between 1990 and 2015.
In 2012 the Outreach ministry was looking to engage Church of the Nativity in ways of reducing hunger in our community, and in discussions during a meeting someone recalled an activity conducted by one of our Sunday school teachers who had taken some of Nativity’s youth to participate in a meal packaging event in a warehouse run by an organization called (at the time) Stop Hunger Now (SHN). The Outreach ministry contacted SHN to kick off a meal packaging event in Nativity’s Corlett Hall whereby generations of parishioners (ages 5 to 95) gathered to package a little over 10 thousand meals in the span of 2 hours. The Outreach ministry decided to sponsor the meal packaging event from its annual budget and make the event a yearly occurrence since the event was such a hit.
To continue and expand upon the MDGs framework, the UN transitioned to 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to tackle the root causes of poverty and pursue comprehensive global development through 2030. The 2030 hunger targets are outlined in SDG 2 with a goal of Zero Hunger by 2030. The primary aim is to end hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture.
Sometime around 2017 or 2018 the SHN organization had to change its name to Rise Against Hunger (RAH) since SHN was already being used by another organization. RAH’s mission stayed the same regardless of the name change, and Nativity continued the yearly event in an effort to help end world hunger by 2030. RAH is on a mission to help underserved people worldwide achieve food security and resilience through nutrition, education and economic empowerment, fueled by a global movement of volunteers and partners.
During the 2020 COVID pandemic Nativity altered its routines, and though the Outreach ministry decided to pay for a little over 10 thousand meals, Nativity had to pivot instead of having the meal packaging event in Corlett Hall, so Nativity sent a small group of parishioners to RAH’s warehouse to package some meals. A few years later Nativity made another pivot, and in 2023 our neighbors at North Raleigh Presbyterian Church joined Nativity’s yearly meal packaging event, helping offset the ever-rising cost of the meals and expanding Nativity’s fellowship with a continued goal of ending world hunger.
Through the 13 (or so) years of meal packaging events Nativity has packaged over 130 thousand meals and each year RAH often sent those meals to areas with the greatest needs, including countries like the Dominican Republic, Mozambique, Haiti, Madagascar, South Africa, the Philippines, and Ukraine.