A meal packaging event is a volunteer project in which meals and/or single-ingredient food items are prepared for distribution to people who struggle with food insecurity.

While many organizations distribute these packaged goods around the world, Illini Fighting Hunger prefers to focus on supporting agencies in the local community, primarily food pantries and food banks in Champaign-Urbana and throughout the state of Illinois.

Illini Fighting Hunger meal packaging events can include as few as 10 volunteers or as many as 450. In a typical packaging event, teams of 6-12 people form an assembly line in which raw food product is measured into a bag, adjusted to be the proper weight, heat-sealed for clean storage and boxed up for transport to its destination.