Austin lost its Kids Against Hunger Location when Oak Park Mall closed late last year, but a group of volunteers are working to keep the meals coming.

Real Hope for the Hungry, a local hunger-fighting group similar to Kids Against Hunger, debuted in Austin recently and held a meal packing event Saturday with a group of Cub Scouts at the Austin Veterans of Foreign War Club, 300 Fourth Ave. NE, which will host the group’s events.

“We are a new, local, community-gassed organization,” said Carol Brown, one of the group’s leaders.

Brown said they weren’t sure what to do after Kids Against Hunger closed with the mall, but groups and volunteers soon started calling and looking for a place to pack meals.

Brown said packing the meals is fun, easy and it “has a real impact and the hungry and the starving.”

Similar to Kids Against Hunger, volunteers, service groups, students and church groups raise money to buy food, which they then mix and package to send off to needy people.

“We want to be able to pull in all the little communities that are around us,” Brown said.

Many of the meals will stay local and could be used at local food shelves. The Salvation Army has taken meals in the past from Kids Against Hunger, as have some of the backpack ministries. This new group would like to give food to local communities too.

“We’d like as much to stay local as is needed,” she said.

Real Help for the Hungry will work with a Twin Cities hunger group, which will then send it on to places like Haiti and Afghanistan.

Many people involved with this group volunteered with Austin’s Kids Against Hunger chapter, which had been located at Oak Park Mall.

The group is planning a community pack on April 18, when people can sign up for sessions at 9 a.m., 10:15 a.m., 11:30 a.m. and 12:45 p.m.