Meet Malena Stone, founder of PACK (People of Action Caring for Kids)
What began as an opportunity to teach her kids about volunteering, Stone and PACK now serve 42 schools and community centers across Chatham County
The project began at a kitchen table, with mom and dad teaching their three young boys about volunteering their time to help others.
Today, the number of people volunteering for that same project exceeds 20,000 a year.
It’s called PACK (People of Action Caring for Kids), and it provides bags of food for 5,600 children to take home over the weekend. These are students whose families struggle with poverty and who rely on school lunches for their daily nutrition.
“We have 42 schools and community centers that we serve every week,” says Malena Stone, the founder of PACK. “And the goal is to be able to offer a weekend bag of food to all the children in Chatham County who live below the poverty line.”
No one was as surprised by the growth and impact PACK has achieved as Stone herself.
“This was the craziest kind of miracle,” Stone says. “Because in the beginning we didn’t really know what we were doing.”
Inspired By Faith
Two of Stone’s most loyal volunteers at PACK are her mother and father. Their giving nature has inspired Stone and her siblings since they were young children.
“I saw how my parents always helped other people, even though we didn’t have much ourselves,” Stone recalls. “We’ve always been inspired by faith and the idea that God wants us to help people. If your parents believe that and demonstrate it, I think it becomes part of who you are.”
Stone has worked with children for most of her life. She was a speech-language pathologist in pediatrics for many years. Her husband, Dudley Stone, MD, was in residency when they first met. Dr. Stone later opened Coastal Pediatrics and the couple started a family.
When her boys were two, four and seven years old, Stone felt it was time to pass on the love of service and helping others in need, just as her parents had done for her. At the time, her brother-in-law was teaching at Thunderbolt Elementary (which later closed in 2017, with students moving to Low Elementary). Stone knew that some of the students suffered from food insecurity during the weekend, so the family project became simply making food bags for the kids in her brother-in-law’s class.
“We could immediately see the difference,” Stone recalls. “The kids would get food bags on Friday and come back on Monday ready to learn and be able to just be normal kids. They weren’t struggling to survive on the weekends. I thought, ‘Maybe I can’t make a difference for everybody, but we can help this class.’ And then it became, ‘We can help this whole school.’ And now it’s, ‘Well, actually, maybe we can feed all the kids.’”
More Ways To Help
As the operation grew, so did word-of-mouth about PACK. Stone’s family welcomed friends and their kids, other church members and neighbors to help make the food bags. The project moved from the Stones’ living room to a trailer donated by their church.
“At a certain point, we didn’t have to invite people anymore; they were asking to come,” Stone says. “Schools started asking to come on field trips. Businesses started asking, ‘How can we help?’ Eventually it became obvious that we needed more space, so we decided to make the jump.”
PACK opened in a renovated warehouse in midtown Savannah just before the COVID-19 pandemic. Volunteers stood six feet apart and made sure PACK never had to close operations.
Two new programs have emerged from PACK’s tremendous growth. The PACK Cottage program fills duffle bags with new clothing, toiletries and toys for children in crisis. Social workers can actually access these duffel bags and food for children from the cottages anytime, day or night.
The PACK Boutique serves more than 100 children in foster or Court Appointed Special Advocates care. The space is set up and decorated like an actual boutique store, and children are able to “shop” for new clothing, shoes and toys every three months until they are 18.
“Some of the older kids will ask us how to know what size they are,” Stone says. “You realize that they’ve never had what we think of as just a normal life experience—picking out something new for yourself.”
The life-changing impact that a weekend meal or new item of clothing can make on a child still amazes Stone, and she is grateful that so many volunteers have helped PACK continue to grow and help more children.
“This all started so we could teach our three little boys about serving others,” Stone says. “But along the way, I realized that being able to do this was also God’s plan for me.”
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