SHERMAN, TEXAS —As part of this year’s Grace Presbytery Senior High Youth Connection held at Austin College, over 500 high school students will work together to make 40,000 meals in an hour and a half.

The Presbyterian students will assemble 6,700 pouches of food from 1:30 to 3 p.m. on Saturday, January 28, in the Sid Richardson Center on the Austin College campus, in partnership with Kids Against Hunger, a nonprofit dedicated to the eradication of world hunger. (For more information, see www.kidsagainsthunger.org)

The meals of white rice, crushed soy, dehydrated vegetables, and a chicken-flavored, vegetarian vitamin and mineral powder provide a highly nutritious, easily digested, and easily transported meal for starving children. The meals offer all nine essential amino acids required for complete nutrition, and only require boiling water to be prepared. Each pouch is six servings of food.

The mission project—the largest ever held during SHYC--is being done in collaboration with the Kiwanis group in Allen, Texas, and Grace First Presbyterian Church in Weatherford, which are providing the supplies. The meals will be distributed to malnourished children in Honduras through Send Hope, a nonprofit organization organized by Tom Brian, a dentist in Allen, Texas. (For more information, see www.send-hope.org)

SHYC is a yearly gathering for Presbyterian high school students through a partnership with the ACtivators and Grace Presbytery. This is the 33rd SHYC event; the gatherings have been held at Austin College since 1980.

Austin College is a leading national independent liberal arts college located north of Dallas in Sherman, Texas. Founded in 1849, making it the oldest institution of higher education in Texas operating under original charter and name, the college is related by covenant to the Presbyterian Church (USA). Recognized nationally for academic excellence in the areas of international education, pre-professional training, and leadership studies, Austin College is one of 40 schools profiled in Loren Pope’s influential book Colleges that Change Lives.