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BD Employee Honors Her Father Through Meal Packaging for Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service

on  January 15, 2024

For Monica Council-Miles, Manager, Social Investing at BD, Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service is not only about honoring Dr. King’s incredible legacy; it is also about honoring her father. 

Monica Council-Miles holds a scoop as she preps to pour soy into into a Rise Hunger meal bag through a yellow funnel.
Monica Council-Miles at a BD event in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, in October 2022.

MLK Day of Service celebrates the life of Martin Luther King Jr. by encouraging Americans to spend the annual day volunteering. From January 9-24 this year, BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) is hosting 22 Rise Against Hunger Experience meal packaging events nationwide and packaging over 372,000 meals collectively to honor his legacy. Through her role at BD, Monica has coordinated these events with Rise Against Hunger that are enabling thousands of her BD colleagues to give back. She is passionate about BD’s commitment to recognizing MLK Day of Service for many reasons, including the opportunity it gives her to remember her dad and his connection to Dr. King. 

Monica grew up in Paterson, New Jersey, where her dad, Charles E. Council, was one of the first Black police officers. Martin Luther King Jr. was friends with the pastor of the church Monica and her family attended. This led to Dr. King visiting Paterson in 1968 to speak to the community about the civil rights movement. When Dr. King came to town, Monica’s dad was chosen to serve on his security team — a great honor. King’s visit to Paterson ended up being only eight days before his assassination. 

Charles E. Council with Martin Luther King Jr. during King’s visit to Paterson, New Jersey.
Photo Credit: Paterson Museum

Monica’s dad, who she describes as her “very best friend,” taught her growing up about the importance of giving back. In her social investing role at BD, she is able to give back as BD partners with Rise Against Hunger and other nonprofits to make a difference. The connection to Martin Luther King Jr. and her dad, who passed away a few years ago, is one that Monica holds very dear, and it now fuels her passion for BD’s recognition of MLK Day of Service every year. She said she can “bring my authentic self to BD because BD was open to the opportunity of me… in my own way, small as it might be… honor[ing] my dad and honor[ing] Dr. King.”

BD, a long-time partner of Rise Against Hunger since 2013, began packaging meals for MLK Day of Service seven years ago. It started with meal packaging events at just a few BD sites and has grown today, in 2024, to 22 events across the country and the packaging of 372,000 meals. Monica is proud of this growth, saying packaging meals is “such an easy thing to do and such an impactful thing to do.” She added, “It’s great when you can work somewhere and bring your ideas, and you can bring your authentic self to the benefit of the organization, to the benefit of the company and the associates.”

BD employees in San Diego (left) and San Antonio during the company’s 2024 MLK Day of Service meal packaging events.

The meals packaged by BD in honor of MLK Day of Service will go on to provide critical nutritional support for communities facing hunger around the world. We are so grateful for their support in the mission to end global hunger, and the opportunity to honor both Dr. King and Monica’s father through these events. 

BD employees in Covington, Georgia, (left) and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, during the company’s 2024 MLK Day of Service meal packaging events.

If you are interested in learning more about our meal packaging program, please fill out the form here.

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To find out more about meal packaging and how to organize your own event, fill out the form and a Rise Against Hunger team member will contact you to start planning. If you’ve connected with our team or filled out this form previously, no need to submit it again. A Rise Against Hunger team member will be in touch soon!
 

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About the Author

Hannah Payne is the Public Relations & Communications Manager at Rise Against Hunger. She facilitates communication between Rise Against Hunger and the media.

More Posts by Hannah Payne

Strength, Stability And Hope

The gift that filled Nelly’s table.

“We were yielding very little, and the crops could not sustain us the whole year,” Nelly remembers. As a mother of seven and a farmer with two decades of experience, the stress of inconsistent yields was all-consuming. A poor harvest not only strained her family financially, but also limited their own meals to just two a day. Their story reflects that of many in their fishing and farming village near a lake in the Karonga district of northern Malawi. Here, heavy rainfall makes conventional farming methods nearly impossible. The entire village is, quite literally, saturated in food insecurity — a reality that leaves families struggling to survive season after season without a dependable source of nourishment.

In 2019, Nelly began participating in Harvesting Prosperity and Resilience, a sustainable agriculture project implemented by Rise Against Hunger in partnership with the Foundation for Community Support Services (FOCUS). The project works with 3,100 smallholder farmers in Malawi’s Karonga and Mzimba districts to strengthen food and nutrition security by improving production methods, nutrition practices and household income.

Just one year later, Nelly was ready to expand the variety of crops on her farm. What land once only produced maize began to flourish with sesame, cowpeas, rice and groundnuts during the rainy season (summer), as well as maize and vegetables during the dry season (winter). Through climate-smart agriculture training, she learned new techniques like manure making, pit planting and mulching, crop rotation and intercropping. Equipped with these tools, Nelly’s farm began to thrive.

After the 2023–2024 growing season, she sold enough produce to purchase an ox cart. Her harvests in 2024-2025 season yielded over 500 pounds of crops, including 22 bags of groundnuts, seven bags of maize, 12 tins of sesame and three bags of rice. With this surplus, she was able to invest in a motorbike, which she now uses to transport African doughnuts (mandasi) that she cooks and sells — creating yet another source of income for her family.

The transformation reaches far beyond her finances. Nelly now has the stability to provide for her husband and children. “I am able to eat different food types, pay school fees for my children and fulfill the visions that I have made with my family,” she beams. “I am now sleeping peacefully without any fears of food or paying school fees for the children.”

Her leadership has also grown. Today, Nelly serves as a leader in the Harvesting Prosperity and Resilience project, teaching other farmers in her district to adopt climate-resilient, labor-saving practices. By sharing her knowledge, she is multiplying her impact — empowering her neighbors to experience the same transformation she has achieved.

Across Nelly’s community, food and economic security are on the rise. Lombani, a government extension officer for the region, explains, “I can see the community is being transformed in the sense that in the area, there is food, income and nutrition security. Development is also happening at the household level.”

Nelly reflects on what it means to invest in holistic programs that address the root causes of hunger: “We are now healthy people. Children are going to school after eating their breakfast, having high yields and different types of crops due to conservation agriculture practices. With the support from the project, we have food, and we can access other food items from the market after selling our produce.”

This is the gift that fills: a future full of stability, strength and hope. It fills tables with food, families with security and communities with the resources to thrive. It’s an investment in futures rooted in resilience and hope.