Since 1936, Maine Day has included a long-standing tradition of service across campus at the University of Maine. On April 29, the university celebrated its 8th year of the annual Maine Day Meal Packout (MDMP) event. The day of the event, hundreds of volunteers show up to pack meals distributed to Maine food pantries in a bid to reduce food insecurity across the state. Last year, over 50,000 meals were sent out, and this year over 80,000 meals were packed by 500 volunteers. Community members, organizers and volunteers spoke to the Maine Campus about the collective work required to prepare for the event.
Melissa Ladenhein, associate dean of the Honors College and MDMP coordinator, spoke to the Maine Campus during an interview at the event. According to Ladenheim, MDMP started in 2018 and grew out of an event in 2017 called the Hungry 100K, where almost 108,000 meals were packed.
“This is a year’s worth of planning that you see here today,” said Ladenheim, sharing that preparation for the next packout begins immediately the day after.
Wayne Hardy, a pickup volunteer from the Sangerville Food Bank, shared “this [event] is a big deal for us” in an interview. He talked about the role that he plays and what the distribution looks like after he delivers the boxes.
“They’ll have a couple 100 families come in and there’s half a dozen volunteers there to make up boxes and distribute them.”
The MDMP leadership team is led by student coordinators and consists of several committees that manage fundraising, outreach, partnerships, marketing and education.
Education chair and third-year history student Jeremy Collamore explained the role he plays in preparation for the event with outreach and collaboration efforts spanning to individual students, faculty, community partners, sports teams and entire classes.
“It’s a more of a year-long task creating all the education tools. A lot of things happen beforehand, from our signs to the banners that we put up. This year we had a really great partnership with athletics. We also do a lot of outreach to honors groups, but then a lot of them too are students and other local schools who’ve volunteered,” said Collamore.
The initiative extends far beyond volunteership on a single day. The leadership team has raised approximately $40,000 this year, stretching from individual donations, support from philanthropic organizations, grassroots fundraisers such as smash-hit mobile bake sales, connections to broader initiatives like the Maine Credit Union League’s Campaign for Ending Hunger and grants such as the Alton ’38 and Adelaide Hamm Campus Activity Fund.
Communications chair and fourth-year ecology and environmental sciences student Luke Valleli serves as the press relations manager within the MDMP leadership team. Valleli’s role as an ambassador and advocate for the meal packout includes coordinating press coverage of the event, pitching the initiative to philanthropic organizations such as Rotary Clubs and drafting materials to promote our fundraisers.
The impact that MDMP has comes from building connections across campus and beyond, working year after year to steward existing support and cultivate new relationships. Valleli believes that this is reflected in their distribution network.
“Meals are not just distributed to longstanding partner food pantries, they continue to stretch all the way from Aroostook county to Cumberland county year after year,” wrote Valleli in a press release.
Fundraising chair and second-year biochemistry student Isabel Dauphinais also offered her thoughts on the importance of MDMP and described her role in collective fundraising actions.
“I am reaching out to donors across the university, and then I also write a lot of grants to outside corporations to help fundraise, because with the price of meals going up, we always need to raise more money,” said Dauphinais.
While at the event, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Gabriel Paquette spoke to the Maine Campus and detailed the role that the Provost’s Office has in supporting MDMP given its importance to the community.
“I think we play a relatively minor role, but we see this as a huge contribution to not just the local community, but the state of Maine. We’re really proud of the fact that our Honors college takes the lead in spearheading this major contribution to the community,” said Paquette.
Paquette then reflected on the collaborative work required to address pressing issues such as food insecurity throughout the state.
“It’s one of the many ways that UMaine demonstrates how committed we are to working on pressing issues such as food security,” said Paquette. “ This is one of the greatest issues of our time, and it’s only becoming more important. The fact that we are involved and can make a contribution, however modest, is something that we should be doing as the University of Maine.”
Ladenheim also offered her perspective on the lasting impact of the event, focusing more on the connections formed through volunteering and her continued involvement with the program.
“I feel so lucky to get to work with this amazing group of students who are so dedicated to this effort and to do that year in and year out,” said Ladenheim. “All these events are just special. It’s spectacular to see a community coming together this way, to volunteer their time, to pack meals for people in Maine that they’ve never met, and probably never will.”
