TFJO packs over 30,000 meals to feed the hungry

Then Feed Just One (TFJO) is an organization from LeMars, Iowa with a chapter here at the USD. Last Thursday, TFJO hosted its biggest event of the year, their annual packaging event in the Muenster University Center pit. This year, the organization packaged 33,264 meals to help feed the hungry

Alex Bergeson, the president of TFJO, said the organization was started in 2017 by some USD students from LeMars who participated in the organization in high school.

“We bring these people in from LeMars that run the event. They’re a group that does a mission trip to Honduras every single year. They take the meals we make along with the meals that they do with their other packing events,” Bergeson said.

Richard Seivert was a high school teacher in LeMars when he started this organization in 2005. The meals TFJO packages are primarily sent to Honduras, but Seivert said the food has gone elsewhere too.

“In all the years we’ve been doing this, actually our food has gone into South Africa, some into Tanzania and east Africa. We ship into Dar Es Salaam and from there some actually makes it into Rwanda,” Seivert said.

Seivert said some meals even stay within the United States to fight hunger after hurricanes or to support impoverished areas. The organization as a whole packs anywhere from 1.2 to 1.4 million meals a year.

Bergeson said the event is usually well-received on campus.

“In the past, we’ve had amazing turnout. Our last event was in the fall of 2019—we weren’t able to have one last year—at the last event we packed 22,680 meals. This year, the goal is 30,000,” Bergeson said.

Seivert said he felt he needed to start this organization after a group of doctors went to Honduras as part of a separate organization called Mission Honduras LeMars, which he also started. Although the doctors were able to bring medicine, it quickly became clear that what the people really needed was food.

“A couple of the doctors from Sioux City came to me and said, ‘never again send us into a village without food,’” Sievert said.

TFJO received $4,900 from SGA, which made up the bulk of their fundraising for the packaging event. They raised an additional $900 over the course of the year with fundraising, though Bergeson said this was lower than usual because TFJO was limited by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’ll do Pizza Ranch fundraisers, HyVee—like the HyChi fundraisers—and then our big one is we’ve run concessions at the basketball, volleyball and football games,” Bergeson said.

Bergeson said this year, TFJO wants to try to do more to help the local community.

“We’re trying to reach out into the community more. So in the past, we have done stuff with (the) Welcome Table downtown, and then the backpack program, which is also ran through there. This year we want to do more of that and kind of have the fall packaging event as our big thing, and then in the spring we really want to get out into the community more and raise more awareness,” Bergeson said.

The Fundraising Chair of TFJO, Sydney Schorg, said the packaging event is especially important to raise awareness about issues in developing nations.

“The biggest thing with this event and our organization is education. A lot of people just aren’t really aware of what’s going on in third-world countries. So I think that educating and doing this event is super important,” Schorg said.