Employees of ConAgra Foods organized more than 125 volunteer events at their local Feeding America food banks and pantries and gave 3,000 hours of service to community-based programs that help children and families overcome hunger. This was all part of the company's first-ever Day of Service. The event is part of the company's Child Hunger Ends Here campaign.
To help the 17.2 million children in the U.S., one in four, struggling with hunger the company's employees helped stock food pantries and distribute food to families in need, donated thousands of pounds of food and prepared community gardens for spring planting season.
"We've been committed to ending child hunger in America for nearly 20 years and -- thanks to the support of ConAgra Foods employees who live and work in communities across the country -- I'm confident we can help make sure that Child Hunger Ends Here!" said Kori Reed, vice president of Cause and the ConAgra Foods Foundation.
Some highlights of the event include:
- Employees in Council Bluffs, Iowa, collected and donated approximately 10,000 pounds of food to the Food Bank for the Heartland, one of the largest donations made to the food bank by any single group.
- Humboldt, Tenn., employees donated nearly 2,500 pounds of food to the Helping Hands of Humboldt food pantry, which is affiliated with the Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee.
- Employees from the Omaha, Neb., area packed more than 14,000 backpacks to be distributed to middle-school and high-school students in rural Iowa and Nebraska during the summer months. The bags were filled with food donated by ConAgra Foods.
- In Pasco, Wash., employees distributed free produce and perishable food items to low-income families and people in need at a mobile food bank in partnership with Second Harvest Inland Northwest.
- Employees in Naperville, Ill., packed more than 7,000 backpacks for children who rely on subsidized school lunch programs at two separate events for the Greater Chicago Food Depository and the Northern Illinois Food Bank.
In 2010, ConAgra Foods and Feeding America launched the Child Hunger Ends Here campaign to increase awareness of the problem of child hunger in America and provide consumers with simple ways to help. The 2011 campaign kicked off in March, bringing together some of ConAgra Foods' best-known brands in the largest cause-marketing program in the company's history. Highlighted by a multi-brand packaging promotion, the broadcast of an NBC Special Report, hosted by Al Roker and Natalie Morales, and online and social media extensions, the comprehensive campaign expands on ConAgra Foods' long-standing commitment to ending child hunger in America. Since 1993, ConAgra Foods and the ConAgra Foods Foundation have donated $35 million and more than 250 million pounds of food to Feeding America.
For more information about Child Hunger Ends Here, click here.
