This week UCT employees are kicking off our annual month-long Operation Feed campaign for Mid-Ohio Foodbank, which provides meals to thousands of hungry individuals in central and eastern Ohio each day. We’re heating things up this year with our Too Hot for Hunger campaign. Our goal is to collect food and funds to provide over 5,000 meals – and we have a number of “firey” events in store to make sure that happens!
Each year Mid-Ohio Foodbank joins forces with local businesses, schools, civic groups, and organizations like UCT to raise critically needed resources through Operation Feed. The food bank distributed over 46 million pounds of food last year through more than 550 emergency feeding sites, including food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, senior centers, and after-school programs.
UCT has supported Operation Feed for over 20 years – and we’re proud to have provided at least 100,000 meals for our fellow Ohioans during that time. This year’s endeavor helps the hungry while ushering in summer – and it promises to be a heated time! Departments have been divided into two teams to collect needed food items through our Flaming Food Drive. The team bringing in the most items wins a pizza party while the “losing” team’s leader will face an extreme cool off via water balloons!
We’ll also raise funds for Operation Feed through a sizzling sub luncheon, a hot fudge ice cream social, and a hot, hot, hot media/bake sale. We’re betting we’ll have success to celebrate at our sizzling wrap up happy hour at the end of the month!
Now more than ever supporting food drives like Operation Feed is vital for our communities. Hunger is on the rise. Recent statistics show that nearly 18 million U.S. households and over 900,000 Canadian households are food insecure and are assisted by food banks each month.
You can do your part to help hungry families and individuals in your community by reaching out to area food banks to find out what they need and how you can provide it. Hunger is a hot issue – but it doesn’t have to be too hot to handle if we all work together to eliminate it.