Katie Stagliano was nine years old and in third grade in Summerville, South Carolina, when she brought home a cabbage seedling for a school project in 2008. Most children would have handed it in and moved on. Stagliano kept growing it long after the project ended, and that decision set off a chain of events that would eventually reach 33 states and feed hundreds of thousands of people.
The seedling grew into a 40-pound cabbage, far too large for the Stagliano family to consume on their own. Stagliano and her mother took it to Tri-County Family Ministries, a soup kitchen near their home. The kitchen turned it into a meal that fed 275 people in a single sitting.
