MLK Day of Service Million Meal Pack 2025: Orlando, FL
Seventeen members of the Sri Sathya Sai Group of Orlando participated in the annual Martin Luther King (MLK) Day of Service Million Meal Pack held at the Orange County Convention Center. The event strives to distribute one million healthy meals of food relief throughout Central Florida, and was hosted in collaboration with US Hunger and Orlando Mayor Dyer’s MLK Commission.
A group of volunteers met at one station where dehydrated food - lentils, rice, salt, and spices - were scooped with various measuring cups and bagged using a filter. Then the bags were weighed, sealed, and boxed. While the activity of spooning spices and dried seasonings may appear on the surface monotonous to volunteers compared to serving actual food to recipients, don’t be misled. Sai volunteers engaged joyfully, feeling uplifted to know these seemingly small acts of service would collectively add up to satisfying meals for the hungry. Within the hearts of Sai volunteers, silent transformations were taking place.
One member was inspired to undertake his own “million meals” event, scaled to an affordable and achievable project for him. He decided to prepare and distribute 100 packages of beans and rice, and macaroni and cheese in honor of Sri Sathya Sai Baba’s 100th birthday in November 2025.
Another member was reflecting on Martin Luther King, and his heroic achievements in Civil Rights. It stirred a deep and abiding sense of humility and gratitude for the food, shelter, home, family in his own life, and expanded his heart with a new sense of empathy for others.
There is truth to an old adage that ‘many hands make light work’. There were hundreds of volunteers who participated that day, and the total meals packed were 1,013,580, well over the goal of a million meals, meals that went to families in Central Florida, and those affected by the wildfires in California.
It was rewarding to participate in a large-scale project supported by Kroeger with a good reputation for quality, and named after the esteemed Dr. Martin Luther King, who inspired the Civil Rights Movement in our country. Though the individual task of bagging and measuring dried food seemed small, the collective effort achieved something great. When divinely inspired, these small and seemingly insignificant acts, carried out with kindness and in unity, achieved a remarkable feat – such as feeding a million people.