Every September 11, volunteers fill the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum to pack shelf-stable meals for people facing hunger. In 2025 more than 6,500 volunteers packed over 2 million meal kits there, part of a national effort that collected over 9 million meals. I have worked the New York flagship every September 11 since 2020. 2026 is my seventh consecutive year.
Quick facts
- Program: 9/11 Day Meal Pack, New York flagship
- Date: September 11, annually. A two-day pack.
- Venue: Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, New York, NY
- Role through 2025: DJ. Music across the packing floor, plus announcements from the booth.
- Role in 2026: DJ plus an expanded hosting brief — more announcements, introducing people, and defined parts of the run of show.
- Run: Every September 11 since 2020. Seventh consecutive year in 2026.
- 2024: pack running behind target; asked to lift the last shift; goal reached
- Volunteers, 2025: 6,500+ at the Intrepid
- Meals, 2025: 2 million+ meal kits in NYC; 9 million+ nationally
- Distributed by: City Harvest and Food Bank For New York City
The program
The 9/11 Day Meal Pack turns the September 11 National Day of Service into physical output. Volunteers work assembly lines across the museum, filling and sealing shelf-stable meal kits that City Harvest and Food Bank For New York City then distribute to New Yorkers facing hunger.
It runs across two days, with volunteers rotating through in shifts. New York is the flagship site of a programme that runs in cities across the country on the same date.
What I do there
I am the DJ. I run the music across the packing floor across both days and I make announcements from the booth. Every year I also encourage volunteers on the mic to sign the tribute wall.
In 2024 the pack was running behind the meal count they wanted, and they asked me to lift the last shift. Volunteers had been packing for hours and the room was flagging. I moved the floor to upbeat 2000s pop and worked the mic through the last stretch. They reached their goal.
That is the clearest description of the job I can give. On a day like that the music is not decoration. The energy in the room and the meal count are the same problem.
How I prepare
I travel in the day before and stay over, so the first day does not start with a commute.
Before that, I get the run of show in advance and talk it through with the organiser, then plan the music against the schedule rather than building a set on the day. The fixed points are known weeks out — the moment of silence, the names, the shift changes — so the music that has to serve them is planned weeks out too.
How I know it is working
Reading the room is the main instrument. Past that, the response from volunteers after each shift tells me whether the last stretch landed, and the programme’s founders and staff give me feedback through the day.
On a floor this size, that feedback loop is the closest thing to a live metric. Meals packed is the number at the end. How the room feels after a shift change is the number you can still do something about.
What changes in 2026
For 2026 I asked the programme for a larger hosting brief than I have carried in previous years: more announcements, introducing people, and owning defined parts of the run of show. It was agreed. The music stays the same job. The difference is how much of the two days I carry on the mic.
This page will be updated after September 11, 2026 with what that actually looked like on the floor.
What the organisers have said
“@_djreese_ has kept all of us dancing non-stop for two days aboard the Intrepid! There’s no way we could get to 2 million meals packed without him. We love you, DJ Reese!”
— 9/11 Day, official Instagram
“@_djreese_ provides the soundtrack to @911day every year! One of our favorite parts of the day ❤️”
— New York Cares, official Instagram
Planning a day of service, a conference or a multi-shift volunteer event? Request a discovery call and tell me what the room has to do.
Why the music matters on this particular day
A meal pack is physical, repetitive work over a long stretch. Output drops when energy drops, and on a floor this size that is measurable in meals. Music is the lever that holds the pace.
What makes September 11 different from any other long shift is where the day starts. The moment of silence happens before the shift begins. So the room is not being lifted from nothing, it is being lifted out of something, into hours of physical work, and the music that opens a shift on that date has to do it without feeling abrupt or forced.
That opening is the part of the assignment I think about most, and it is why a day of service is not the same booking as a party.
The set: September 11, 2025, 11am to 1pm
This is the actual running order from the 11am to 1pm shift on the second day of the 2025 pack. I am publishing it because the argument on this page is that song selection is the work, and an argument like that is worth nothing without the evidence.
Nothing on it is about September 11. The moment of silence happens before the shift. Once volunteers are on the line the job is physical output for two hours, and a set full of reflection would put the room on the floor.
It is built for a room that is not from one place. Spanish-language reggaeton, dancehall, soca, Afro-house out of South Africa, Latin freestyle, Nineties Eurodance. A New York volunteer floor is every nationality in the city at once, and a set that only works for one of them loses the rest of the room.
A quarter of it tells people what to do with their bodies. Cha Cha Slide, Follow The Leader, Move Your Feet, The Train. People doing repetitive assembly work will move if the record gives them the instruction, and moving people pack faster than static ones.
Every track is a clean edit. On a floor with teenagers, corporate teams and family members of people who died, that is not a preference. It is the job.
The closer is the only record on the list that means anything. Forty-four tracks of pure energy, then The Beatles. That is where the shift lands, and it is the one moment I let the day back in.
- Rihanna — This Is What You Came For
- Miami Sound Machine — Conga
- Sean Paul — Temperature
- Technotronic — Pump Up The Jam
- Toman — Verano En NY
- Enur — Calabria 2008
- Corona — The Rhythm of the Night
- Wuki — Sunshine (My Girl) [Extended Mix]
- Two Gangs — Turma
- Danzel — Pump It Up (L2O Remix)
- Haddaway — What Is Love (Aurelios Remix)
- James Hype ft. Kim Petras — Drums
- Flo Rida ft. T-Pain — Low
- David Guetta ft. Kid Cudi — Memories
- Farruko — Pepas
- Jennifer Lopez — Let’s Get Loud
- Doechii — The Bomb vs. Anxiety (LXRENZ Remix)
- Pitbull ft. John Ryan — Fireball
- Pitbull — Echa Pa’lla (Manos Pa’rriba)
- DJ Casper — Cha Cha Slide
- Junior Senior — Move Your Feet
- ABBA — Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!
- Robin Thicke ft. T.I. and Pharrell — Blurred Lines
- El Alfa x Tainy ft. Dalex and Alvaro Diaz — Mera Woo (DJ GomEda mashup)
- El Alfa, Darell, Noriel — 4K
- Master KG ft. Nomcebo — Jerusalema
- Jess Glynne — Hold My Hand
- Loud Luxury ft. Brando — Body
- Dev — In The Dark
- Avicii — Levels
- 2 Unlimited — Get Ready For This
- Quad City DJ’s — C’mon N’ Ride It (The Train)
- Vengaboys — Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!!
- Vengaboys — We Like To Party
- Zombie Nation — Kernkraft 400
- The Soca Boys — Follow The Leader
- The Black Eyed Peas — Pump It
- Avril Lavigne — Girlfriend
- Kenny Loggins — Footloose
- Rihanna ft. Drake — Work
- Lil Mama — Lip Gloss
- DJ Snake and Lil Jon — Turn Down For What
- Gwen Stefani — Hollaback Girl
- Justin Timberlake — Can’t Stop The Feeling
- The Beatles — All You Need Is Love
What this has to do with corporate work
A meal pack is not a sales kickoff. But four things carry over, and they are the four that decide whether a corporate event holds.
It runs across two days. The first hour of day two has to match the first hour of day one, in front of people who were not there yesterday and have no idea what they missed. Most entertainment bookings are a single set. A conference is not.
The audience turns over in shifts. New faces every few hours, each group starting cold. That is the same problem as a multi-session conference or a multi-day activation, where the third breakout deserves the same room as the first and usually does not get it.
The day starts from a standstill. The moment of silence comes before the shift does. The room has to go from that into hours of physical work against a two-million-meal target, and the music that opens a shift on September 11 is not the music that opens anything else. Most entertainment vendors are never asked to handle a tonal range at all. It is the hardest part of this job and it does not appear anywhere on a rider.
You are one vendor inside somebody else’s production. There is an AV company running sound on that floor and I plug into their system. A museum on a pier has its own access rules on top of that. Working cleanly inside another vendor’s setup, in a building you do not control, without becoming anyone’s problem, is a skill, and it is what a planner is actually buying when there are three other vendors in the room.
If your company is planning a day of service, those are the four questions worth asking whoever you hire. More on corporate event DJ work in New York City and on brand activations and experiential events.
Video from the floor
Photos
The scale, in numbers
- More than 6,500 volunteers at the Intrepid across the two days in 2025
- Over 2 million meal kits packed in New York City, part of more than 9 million nationally
- Meal packs in 24 cities nationwide in 2025
- Distributed by City Harvest and Food Bank For New York City
- Seven consecutive years on the New York flagship, every September 11 since 2020
Who is actually on the packing floor
The volunteers are not a general public crowd. They arrive as company teams. The corporate partners behind the New York pack have included Delta Air Lines, JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Pfizer, Nestlé, Stifel, Holland & Knight and Reliance, and MLB Together brings league staff and former players to the floor. In 2025 I ran a shift in front of a Team RBC group.
To be exact about what that means: these are the programme’s partners, not my clients. Nobody on that list hired me. But the room I read for two days is made of corporate employee groups from Fortune 500 companies, and that is the same room a planner is asking me to read at a kickoff, a conference or a service day of their own.
Coverage of the event
These outlets covered the meal pack itself, not me. I am listing them because the event is verifiable, the numbers on this page came from them, and anyone checking this case study should be able to check it against somebody other than me.
- CBS New York — Thousands of volunteers mark 9/11 Day of Service at Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, September 2023
- Our Town NY — Two million meal kits packed by volunteers aboard Intrepid, September 2025
- Harlem World — 24 years later, 9/11 Day of service brings together volunteers for national meal pack, September 2025
- MLB.com — MLB Together, 9/11 Day volunteers gather to pack meals aboard Intrepid, September 2024
- Food Bank For New York City — Volunteers pack 2 million meals at the Intrepid Museum
Related work
Other rooms where the same problem showed up in a different shape, and the page that covers this market:
- Corporate event DJ and emcee in New York City — how I work this market outside of 9/11 Day
- Fox Corporation Fan Fair — a brand activation with a public crowd rather than a booked audience
- PUMA brand activation — holding dwell time in a retail environment
- RMS sales kickoff — a multi-session corporate programme with a fixed run of show
- CBRE World Cup watch party — a corporate audience with an unpredictable energy curve
- LIDL US grand openings — the same run of show repeated across 72 markets
- All case studies
Frequently asked questions
Do you host the 9/11 Day program?
Through 2025 I was the DJ and made announcements from the booth. For 2026 I asked for a larger hosting brief — more announcements, introducing people, and owning defined parts of the run of show — and it was agreed.
How long is the day?
It is a two-day pack, with volunteers rotating through in shifts across both days.
How many years have you done it?
Every year since 2020. 2026 is the seventh consecutive year.
Where do the meals go?
City Harvest and Food Bank For New York City distribute them to New Yorkers facing hunger.
Do you take corporate days of service as bookings?
Yes. Request a discovery call, or see all case studies.