Nearly 50 teens of all backgrounds came together at our conference center on January 31st as part of Feeding Our Neighbors: An Interfaith Response. They were drawn together to help ensure that New Yorkers don’t go hungry this winter.

Now in its fourth year, Feeding Our Neighbors is an initiative of UJA-Federation of New York, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, and the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies. This year, we were also joined by Bread for the World.

For the last several weeks, the organizations worked together to collect and distribute food packages across pantries and shelters throughout the New York area.

The teens represented UJA-Federation’s Center for Youth Philanthropy and Leadership along with teens from the other charities.

On a weekend afternoon when they could have been hanging out with friends, these teens instead prepared 430 packages of kosher food, representing 3,333 meals, donated that day by Goya for distribution at the Food Bank of New York. And they also delved deeper into their hands-on experience by writing letters to Congress about child hunger and taking part in thoughtful discussions about food insecurity.

The teen gathering was just one of many Feeding Our Neighbors events taking place since December for New Yorkers of all ages, including a Martin Luther King Day kid-friendly food-packing event hosted by UJA-Federation at four locations in Brooklyn, Long Island, Manhattan, and Westchester that drew a total of 700 volunteers.