ORLANDO, Fla. – Dozens of volunteers are getting results for hurricane victims by packaging healthy meals that will be shipped off to communities impacted by this season's storms.
"Never before has the need been as great as it is this year," Jennifer Hodges, with Loews Hotels at Universal Orlando Resort, said.
This marks the fifth year the company has teamed up with "Feeding Children Everywhere," a local nonprofit organization with the mission to provide healthy meals to children and families around the world.
On Saturday, dozens of volunteers made up of hotel employees, community members and hotel guests participated in the annual hunger project at all five resorts.
The volunteers formed assembly lines where they measured, poured and sealed the nutritious meals. The completed meals were then packaged in boxes and stacked to be shipped off to hurricane victims in Central Florida, Puerto Rico and Texas.
Their goal is to package 375,000 meals.
"We recently started doing a lot of disaster relief due to circumstances, so we're really honored to be part of that and very thankful that our meals can go to places where they're really needed right now," Feeding Children Everywhere's Meaghan Crump said.
Organizers said 100,000 meals will stay in Central Florida, 100,000 will be sent to Texas and 100,000 will be sent to Puerto Rico for hurricane relief efforts. The remaining meals will be sent to an organization in New York.
For many volunteers, packaging meals is a tradition that kicks off the holiday season.
"You have to help the kids. It's Christmas. It's holidays. We should do this all year," volunteer Maryellen Oravetz said.
It is a community effort to make sure no one goes hungry.
"A lot of these meals will be distributed as soon as this weekend to these various communities that we're supporting," Hodges said.