Mars Area High School students volunteered their time outside the classroom to tackle one of the world’s biggest needs: battling hunger.

Students took part in the eighth annual “Walk for Hunger” event held at Adams Township Community Park Sunday morning, Sept. 21. It was sponsored by the high school’s Key Club and National Honor Society.

Katie Mueller, a senior at Mars who led the event, said she took on the walk for hunger because of her family friend Mindy Schintgen, a founder of local nonprofit Inspired Hearts and Minds, where she has spent time volunteering.

“I feel Mars students attended this walk because they wanted to be a part of something that would change the lives of so many around us. We got a great turnout of students which made me so happy,” Mueller said.

The “Walk for Hunger” was hosted by Armstrong’s Breaking Bread, an initiative to provide food and other needs to community families that are dealing with hunger. They host the event to collect resources to help supply community feeding programs and bring awareness to the need that exists.

Participants paid $20 to take part in the walk.

Mueller said her goals was to get at least $5,000 in donations from the event. She said the walk ended up raising $9,387.

“Since 2018, this project has raised more than $60,000,” Mueller said. “An important statistic I should mention is that 1 in 13 Butler County residents don’t have the means to put food on the table. This is a huge pool of people that suffer from food insecurity. All the donations I solicited are equivalent to around 28,000 meals.”

In Pennsylvania, 1 in 8 residents experience food insecurity, according to advocacy group Feeding Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania’s government website defines food insecurity as “not having access to reliable and nutritious meals.”

“Since hunger and health are deeply connected, the effects of chronic hunger are profound. Those effects include increased risks for chronic diseases, higher chances of hospitalization, poorer overall health and increased health care costs. Adequate access to healthy meals is also critical to child development and success in education so kids can focus in school and lead healthier, more productive lives,” according to the state’s website.

Mueller said she first took on the fundraising project in early June, not realizing how much of an impact it would have. Over the past few months, she has worked to find sponsorships, host food drives, collect donations and advertise the walk to gain as much support as possible.