When Megan Fruchte was a high school freshman, a representative of Stop Hunger Now visited the school and spoke to her student service club. “I knew that famine and poverty were serious issues, but never before had someone put them into such tangible terms nor offered such an effective way to help,” says Megan, now a senior at North Carolina State University studying biological and agricultural engineering and biomanufacturing.
At her first meal packaging event for Stop Hunger Now, “surrounded by energetic people all working towards a common and selfless goal,” she found inspiration and a lesson in “how people could work together to really make a difference.”
As a college student, she has “learned about the challenges of feeding a growing world,” including soil depletion, pollution, nutrient leaching, loss of biodiversity, and water shortages. “And with an expected world population of 9 billion people in just 35 years, I knew it was an urgent problem that would have to be solved in my lifetime.”
Seeing her career aspirations in sync with the goals of Stop Hunger Now (her “favorite organization”!) Megan is working to bring together volunteers from agricultural biotechnology companies for a meal-packaging event that will demonstrate that collaboration can grow into a “broader effort to achieve global food security.”