GOAL COUNTDOWN: Meals From The Heartland

Meals from the Heartland has until Saturday evening to reach its goal of five million meals.

Thousands of volunteers kicked off the effort on Wednesday, packaging meals to feed the hungry in Iowa and around the world

Every two or three hours a truck load of packaged food leaves Hy-Vee Hall; organizers hope it will be enough to reach their goals.

“The first hour or two on Wednesday when we finally hit 100-thousand, we though how are we ever going to get to 5 million, but it’s just like building momentum in a train, the train is rolling down the track and it`s going to get there,” said Dave Bradley, the Executive Director Meals From the Heartland

Organizers credit their success to the huge volunteer turnout this year.

As of Friday night, they had packaged 4.1 million meals.