CEDAR FALLS — As volunteers filed down from the bleachers onto the floor of the UNI-Dome, Panther mascots T.C. and T.K. were there, giving high-fives and skipping through the tables awaiting volunteers to pack tens of thousands of plastic bags of food.
In the background, Northeast Iowa Food Bank Executive Director Barb Prather and University of Northern Iowa Provost Jim Wohlpart were there, too, watching as hundreds of people chose to use Martin Luther King Jr. Day to pack hundreds of thousands of bags of food for the Food Bank’s BackPack program.
“This really should be a day on, not a day off,” said Wohlpart of MLK Day’s Pack the Dome. The annual event was held for the first time in the UNI-Dome instead of Maucker Union to accommodate more people. “Next year, we’ll have to figure out how we can do it even bigger.”
Around 1,600 volunteers working in two shifts Monday packed what would amount to 48,000 backpacks full of kid-friendly fare, such as macaroni and cheese, Spaghetti-Os, fruit cups and more.
“This will pack about a third of our inventory, or two-and-a-half months’ supply,” Prather said. “The beauty of this is we get it all done on one day.”
The food-packing event has been a partnership for the last six years between UNI, the Food Bank and the Volunteer Center of the Cedar Valley, said Lauren Finke, the center’s executive director.
