Unity College students will spend part of Sunday packing meals for hungry people across the world.

Volunteers and organizers from Stop Hunger Now, a Raleigh, North Carolina-based charity, will pack 12,000 meals Sunday afternoon for food-insecure families internationally.

“The goal is to help people who are food-insecure get some relief and also to educate and raise awareness in the community about hunger, poverty and equity issues internationally,” said organizer Ashley Allen, a sophomore at the college, in a news release.

Allen is looking for more volunteers to help pack up the dry food and wants to accept donations of money to add to the $3,600 already raised. The packing event will start at 1:30 p.m. in Tozier Auditorium and is expected to continue until 3:30 p.m.

According to its website, Stop Hunger Now was established in 1998, and it has provided more than 180 million meals in 65 countries in Africa, the Middle East, Central and South America and Asia.

While Sunday’s event is focused on alleviating international hunger, the college and its students have been involved in helping feed hungry people at the local level for years, spokesman Bob Mentzinger said on Wednesday. Maine has the highest rate of food insecurity in New England, according to Good Shepherd Food Bank, the state’s largest. According to Feeding America, a U.S. hunger relief charity, the overall food insecurity rate in Waldo County, where Unity is located, is more than 15 percent and the food insecurity rate for children is 25 percent.

According to Mentzinger, Unity College has launched a number of programs to help local hungry families. It works with Veggies for All, a project of the Maine Farmland Trust directed by Unity College graduate Sara Trunzo. Since 2010, Veggies for All has grown and distributed 75,000 pounds of vegetables to local food-insecure people, according to its website. The organization cultivates 3 acres of vegetables, including some plots on the Unity College campus.

“The school definitely does a lot in the community to alleviate hunger,” Mentzinger said.

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