Met up yesterday with some interesting folks doing some good work.

These kids (pictured) are among the six Johnson County (Kansas) school districts that worked to package non-perishable meals designed by Numana, Inc., an international hunger relief organization based in El Dorado, Kansas.

It’s a new concept: Numana partners with community groups and schools to package the meals, which are made up of rice, soy protein, freeze-dried vegetables, and 21 vitamins and minerals. The food is meant to help the immune system of malnourished people.

The meals are not just for sustenance, they are meant for the starving. The packages made yesterday will go to refugee camps in Kenya, said Jon Rodriguez, who does social media for Numana.

“There are thousands who are dying every day,” he said.

The event was organized by Kansas State-Olathe, which is partnered with Numana for the Swipe Out Hunger event.

I also sat in for a lecture by Timothy Dalton, a K-State agricultural economics professor, who talked about food security. The issue has become increasingly urgent given the rise in food prices since 2007, he said, which hadn’t happened in decades.

Some one billion people are currently labeled as food insecure, Dalton said. The next trend in work hunger is expected to be the 500 million people who live under sustained food limitations and the those who suffer “hidden hunger,” the 15- to 20 percent of the world’s population who don’t get enough iron, Vitamin A, zinc and iodine, he said.

For more on background on local food insecurity, click here for a story by Harvest Public Media’s Clay Masters.