Rice project enters year 2

A year ago Rita Juhl asked her congregation, St. Peder Lutheran, Minneapolis, to join her in the Rice Dinner Project.

Once a month families eat a meal of only rice and give the money they would have spent on a more expensive dinner to the ELCA World Hunger Appeal or other hunger-fighting causes (June 2008, "Rice for dinner").

After word of the project spread through newspaper and magazine articles, Juhl received e-mails from across the nation.

She believes that if 100 congregations are now participating (and each individual or family gave $10 a month this past year), more than $1 million was donated to help combat hunger.