With the holidays on the horizon, it’s quite possible that you’re putting together a basket full of food for a less-fortunate family. While classic donations (like canned tuna) are undoubtedly useful, there’s a plethora of other needs that go unfulfilled.
As reported by Foodlets’ Charity Curley Matthews, here are some ideas on what food banks actually need:
1. Canned meat (other than tuna). The need for this is universally reported.
2. Low sodium canned vegetables and fruit (packaged in juice). Organizations receive mostly green beans and pineapple, so other varieties are particularly desired.
3. Snacks for kids, such as granola bars and popcorn.
4. 100 percent fruit juices in single-serving boxes.
5. Canned food with pop-top lids, which the homeless can open without a can opener.
6. Baby food. Take Part mentions how impoverished parents have a serious fear of inconsistent food for infants.
7. Personal hygiene products. Take Part also reports that, when given food stamps, people often overlook the need for products like toilet paper.
8. Low-sugar breakfast foods like Cheerios and instant oatmeal.
9. Feminine products. Foodlets states that unscented pads are the most useful.
10. Holiday foods. This is an important one, with food shelters hoping to receive things such as canned turkey (some will even accept whole turkeys and hams), sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce.
Click here for other items that you should consider donating.
MORE: 50 Million Americans Suffer From Food Insecurity. Here Are 6 Simple Ways You Can Help
Tag: donations
The Tech Giant That’s Playing Fairy Godmother to Teachers Nationwide
Google is getting an A+ in generosity this month.
Teachers in Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, Kansas City, Austin and Washington D.C. and more have been #FlashFunded (a social media campaign we can get behind) by the tech titan — meaning that educators in these cities recently saw every single item on their DonorsChoose.org (a crowdfunding site where teachers post items or materials they need for their classrooms) wishlists completely funded.
In Los Angeles, Google donated $1 million to 769 teachers, who will receive school materials such as paper, pencils, books, laptops, musical instruments and microscopes for their 75,108 students, the Santa Monica Mirror reports.
And in Massachusets, Google forked out $175,000 to 202 Boston and Cambridge teachers. (If you click on this DonorsChoose link, for example, you’ll see that every project that was listed on Boston’s page has been removed.)
Google’s move got a hearty pat on the back from native son, Ben Affleck.
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Austin received $87,803 for 133 projects, and teachers in Seattle had 341 back-to-school projects funded. Incredibly, a $240,000 donation to Washington D.C.’s teachers has impacted a total of 31,362 of the area’s students.
“We are so humbled and grateful to Google for their devotion to our teachers and students,” says Charles Best, founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org, after a $194,370 donation funded 175 projects in greater Kansas City. “This is a great day for Kansas City classrooms.”
ALSO: To Change Public Education, This Nonprofit Is Hacking the System
Google’s gesture not only ensures that teachers in high-need communities have the supplies and tools they need to help students succeed, but it also alleviates a very expensive burden many of them probably face. As we previously reported, the average educator spends $350 of his or her own money for classroom supplies and resources (and we already know that our country’s teachers don’t make a lot of money). By allowing our nation’s teachers spend less time worrying about money, they can devote more time educating students instead.
This isn’t the first time Google has made a generous donation to help our nation’s educators soar, and undoubtedly, their current nationwide blitz is getting teachers in other cities very excited.
We wait with baited breath to see which city’s deserving students and teachers get #FlashFunded next.
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This Janitor’s School Family Gifts Him Money to Visit His Family Overseas
As the old adage goes, what goes around comes around.
That’s exactly what janitor Rick Spaulding learned recently from the staff of students at Anderson County High School (ACHS) in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.
Spaulding, who has tended the halls of ACHS for the past 16 years, was called in during a recent pep rally to mop up a spill. But, as Lex18 reports, when he walked into the gymnasium, he was surprised to find that the whole school had raised nearly $2,000 to allow him and his wife to visit their son — and their new month-old grandchild that they have yet to meet — in Italy.
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Spaulding hasn’t seen his son, who serves at a naval base near Sicily, since the day he left the country a year and a half ago. “My son is stationed in Italy and we are going to see him,” Spaulding told Lex18. “Words can’t describe the joy that I feel right now.”
Incredibly, the school was able to keep this surprise from Spaulding since earlier this year.
“I was doing my job, just going to take care of the spill, completely oblivious to what was going on,” the 51-year-old told Yahoo! Shine. “The outpouring that the students and staff showed me was overwhelming.”
After all the years of Spaulding taking care of the school, now it’s taking care of him.
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DON’T MISS: When a Former Campus Legend Became Homeless, This Amazing Community Stepped Up
A Beer Company Focuses on Donations, Not Profits
Walk down any busy street of a city, and you’ll hopefully find a food truck that best fits your appetite. Becoming increasingly popular among urban dwellers, these mobile restaurants serve everything from burgers and fries to tacos and nachos and even lobster rolls.
However, one food truck won’t serve meals to their customers — but they’ll graciously accept them.
Finnegans beer launched their “Reverse Food Truck” in March to help feed the hungry. Their plan? To travel around Minnesota in their green vehicle until October, with the goal of collecting $50,000 worth of cash or credit card donations and non-perishable items. But that’s not all.
According to their Facebook page, the beer company (which sells a blonde ale and an Irish amber) says 100 percent of their profits will go towards feeding the hungry. They also began a social media campaign to keep people in the loop as to where the food truck will be stationed every day, according to ABC News.
The Reverse Food Truck has also created campaigns to increase its donations among passersby. One photo that Finnegans tweeted conveyed the message that you could win free beer for a month if you made a donation.
Jacquie Berglund, CEO of Finnegans, Inc. says the organization is not only pushing to increase its donations, but they are also partnering up with farmers in the area.
“In addition to raising funds, and collecting non-perishables, we’re also supporting local growers to get organic produce to those in need — and we have a lot of farmers in the area!” she tells ABC News. “So the wealth that we create in the community goes back to the community.
In partnership with the Emergency Foodshelf Network’s Harvest for the Hungry Program, Finnegans beer’s Reverse Food Truck has raised approximately 5,700 pounds of produce that’s already been delivered to the hungry.
But even if you can’t run to the Reverse Food Truck in time, you can always make a difference by donating using a virtual food menu. The Finnegans website provides a menu that shows you how much of a difference your gift will make. Donate $10 and you’ve just provided someone with food for five days; donate $100 and you can feed a family of four for two weeks.
How are local patrons reviewing the Reverse Food Truck? “This is a new thing for me, but as soon as I saw it, I came right up and [threw] some money in it,” Jacob Ciuraru told NPR. “A little bit goes a long way sometimes.”
MORE: Food Cowboy: Teaching Truck Drivers ‘Nothing Goes to Waste’
This Pro Football Player Fulfills an Extraordinary Promise to His Old High School
How many people promise to do something but never make good on their pledge? We’re guessing lots. But NFLer Darrius Heyward-Bey isn’t one of them.
Back when Heyward-Bey was a senior at McDonogh School in Owings Mills, Maryland, he made a thoughtful promise to Mickey Deegan, the school’s athletic director. “We were on the sidelines, and Darrius asked me why we didn’t have lights in the stadium,” Deegan said in a blog post on the college-preparatory school’s website. “When I told him lights were expensive and it would take a very generous gift to make that happen, he put his arm around my shoulders and said, ‘When I go pro I’m going to buy you some lights…because night games are what high school football is all about.’”
Well, the young man certainly made it and now he’s paying it forward. After playing college football for the University of Maryland, Heyward-Bey was drafted by the Oakland Raiders in 2009. Currently, he’s a wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Making good on his promise, the entire McDonogh School community will experience the real-life thrill of Friday night lights starting next fall — and maybe even nurture a path for the school’s current football players to make it big.
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“Young players dream of playing under the lights, but the reality is that 95 percent of athletes don’t play after high school,” 27-year-old Heyward-Bey told the school. “I’m glad McDonogh football players will now have that opportunity.”
The school says the move will certainly bring the community together and raise school spirit to another level.
The Maryland-born athlete added that his gesture is his way of showing appreciation to the place he came from. “Giving back is showing that you appreciate where you come from, and McDonogh is where I come from,” Heyward-Bey said. “I learned so much from my teachers and coaches. I would not be the person I am today if McDonogh was not along my path in life.”
Howard Shultz’s Extraordinary $30 Million Gift For Our Returning Warriors
When you drop $5 for a caramel macchiato, you probably don’t realize that you’re actually helping our nation’s service members. But thanks to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s devotion to social responsibility, standing up for veterans is as easy as buying your morning coffee.
In a recent interview with CBS News, Shultz announced that he is donating an extraordinary $30 million to help with the rehabilitation of our returning soldiers, putting the money towards research into brain trauma and PTSD — ailments that thousands of warriors suffer from. (According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, PTSD afflicts anywhere from 11 to 20 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.) Also part of the plan? Starbucks’s commitment to hire 10,000 veterans and their spouses over the course of the next five years.
MORE: Here’s What You Probably Didn’t Know About PTSD
Shultz told CBS’s Scott Pelley that the government does a much better job of sending people to war than they do bringing them home. “These young men and women, who are coming home from multiple deployments, are not coming home to a parade,” he said. “They’re not coming home to a celebration. They’re coming home to an American public that really doesn’t understand, and never embraced, what these people have done.”
He described the heartbreaking experience of seeing a severely wounded soldier at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. “A young, 21-year-old warrior who had lost both his legs was being wheeled around by his mother. And you ask yourself, ‘If that was my son or my daughter, how would we respond?’ And I think my responsibility now is I have seen things, and I’ve heard things and I’ve met these people and their families, and you just can’t be a bystander. You have to do everything you can to tell their story and help them.”
Howard Schultz has certainly taken a big step in doing just that—and we salute him for it.
One 12-Year-Old’s Feet-First Mission to Help the Homeless
Henry Allen, 12, understands that there’s nothing worse than having cold feet in the winter. So for a school project, he started collecting shoes and socks for a local homeless shelter. One charity dodgeball tournament and 415 donated pairs of shoes later, Allen made a big difference to the neediest members of his community.