By Jimin Kim
On Sunday, October 27, about 50 volunteers formed assembly lines in the Student Center of Brooklyn College in South Midwood to pack 10,000 rice and beans meals each containing six servings to be delivered to food pantries in the Bahamas.
The event called "Feed Bahamas" aimed to feed those struggling in the archipelago nation after the destruction caused by Hurricane Dorian at the start of September. The Category 5 hurricane was the strongest storm on record to make landfall in the Bahamas.
Non-profit the Brooklyn Bridge Rotary Club bought food supplied by The Outreach Program and assembled volunteers including girl scouts from Saint Gregory the Great Catholic Academy in Brooklyn. Non-profit organization, the Brooklyn College Rotaract, also helped pack the meals, while the non-profit The Outreach Program organized the duties and food measurements for each assembly line.
The Brooklyn Bridge Rotary Club plans to send the food to the Rotary Club of East Nassau in the Bahamas where the food will be given to the locals there.
According to figures announced on September 27 by Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Minnis, 56 deaths have been confirmed in the Bahamas since the storm and 600 people have been calculated missing. In the Bahamian government's first count around mid-September, the government announced approximately 2,500 people were missing.
United States Customs and Border Protection said about 4,000 hurricane refugees are living in the U.S. with many of them in Florida. Parts of the Bahamas are still destroyed amid recovery efforts.
