Great Examples of Giving

Happy Valentine's Day

Al and Barbara Bern have made a tradition of donating to Hunger Task Force instead of buying gifts for friends. To acknowledge these gifts, Hunger Task Force sends out cards stating that a donation was made in their honor. This is fairly common, especially during December. This year the Bern's are getting creative. Instead of buying Valentine’s Day cards they made a monetary donation to Hunger Task Force and sent a list of everyone who should be honored by their gift.

 

A Little Friendly Food Sorting Competition…7th graders vs. 8th graders

On January 13, 2010, Pastor Margaret and the 7th grade Confirmation Class from St. Matthews Lutheran Church sorted an amazing 25,000 pounds of food!
The congregation was impressed and proud of their young people when the total was announced at church. There was, however, another group of young people who saw the accomplishments of the 7th grade class as a challenge. So, on January 20th, Hunger Task Force welcomed the 8th grade Confirmation Class, led by Pastor Chris of St. Matthews Lutheran Church. Both groups had excellent intentions and even bigger hearts, but the eighth graders had a height advantage and scored the victory by sorting 26,000 pounds! There are no losers in this story of course and the big winners are the hungry in Milwaukee because together these local young people sorted a total of 51,000 pounds of food.
Way to go St. Matthews Lutheran Church Confirmation Classes and thanks for all of your help, you are a great example of giving!

Souper Bowl of Caring

Greenfield Elementary School Student Council spearheaded a food drive in their school inspired by the “Souper Bowl of Caring”. (www.souperbowl.org ) The kids hosted a school wide food drive and the class that collected the most food was treated to a pizza party. An enthusiastic 5th grade class won. The school collected a whopping 2,975 pounds of food! Congratulations to Greenfield School for stepping up and choosing Hunger Task Force for their food collection.

Join the movement that is transforming Super Bowl weekend into the nation’s largest youth-led weekend of giving and serving. Souper Bowl of Caring equips and mobilizes congregations, schools and businesses to positively impact their communities by collecting money or food on or near Super Bowl weekend. 100% of the collections are donated directly to the charity of each group's choice.

"Monkey Pants" shares his birthday

On a recent wintery Friday afternoon a young family pulled up to Dock 1 at Hunger Task Force with several boxes of food to donate. A fairly typical scene at 201 S. Hawley Court, but as the warehouse specialist started taking down the specifics of their donation, the young parents informed him that the food was being donated by their sons who recently turned 4 and 2 (see photo). "That's sweet," he smiled, not really understanding how literal the parents were being. Turns out that these young guys had learned that some boys and girls who lived near them did not have enough to eat some days. They didn't like thinking about how awful that must be so they asked friends and family to give them food for their recent birthdays instead of presents. A great example of giving and a great reminder that no matter the time of year, tis better to give than to receive!

 

Scout Pack 146

Each winter, the 40 members of Cub Scout Pack 146 from Jefferson Elementary School in Wauwatosa go door to door in the neighborhood selling holiday wreaths. The money these youngsters raise from the wreaths goes toward their camping supplies and adventures for the upcoming summer. For their hard work, the scouts each get a bonus 10% of their total wreath sales. And in true Cub Scout fashion, they wanted to make their hard earned money help others. They knew that the post-holiday months are a tough time for many families, so they each decided to pool together a portion of their own earnings to help out those less fortunate. Together, they donated $80—a mountain of riches for kids who are not yet 10 years old—to Hunger Task Force. One scout even donated his entire sales bonus—what big hearts these little guys have! That $80 brought a lot of comfort to a lot of families this winter. Thank you Pack 146!

 

Braving Heartburn for a Good Cause

Cans and boxes of food dropped off for the hungry meant extra chili for the folks who stopped out to the MilwaukeeFood.com Chili Bowl at the Harley-Davidson Museum on Sunday, January 31st. Over 25 restaurants competed for the “Golden Ladle” and year-long bragging rights as the baddest chili in town. This is the first year Hunger Task Force was involved in the event and it definitely won’t be the last as chili enthusiasts donated 1,247 pounds of food! Thank you to everyone who stopped out to donate food and consume copious amounts of chili and we’ll see you on January 30, 2011, AKA the Sunday before the Super Bowl!

 

Harley’s employees rev up to fight hunger

Harley-Davidson is already a partner in our fight against hunger through their Fueling Young Minds summer meal program, but it doesn’t stop there. Legendary companies stay at the top of the hill because they hire great employees and strive for excellence at every level. This past November, the 1,000 men and women in Powertrain Operations on Capitol Drive in Wauwatosa  had a competition to see which area could donate the most food per person, with the winners getting a pizza party. After two highly contested weeks, the results were 2,334 pounds of food and over $2,000 raised! And the kicker was that the winners decided to donate the money that would have gone to the pizza party to fight hunger as well, an additional $2000! Harley-Davidson and the people who make the machines you know and love, are truly a leader in the Milwaukee community.
www.harley-davidson.com

 

The Tweet that Fed Milwaukee

It isn’t easy to put together 500 Holiday bins full of all the fixin’s that you have when friends and family come over, but Hunger Task Force worked together with generous donors from the Milwaukee community to get it done. Klement’s Sausage Company is one of these community leaders who saw the need and took action. The story begins on of all places… Twitter. Christina Klement became a follower @hungertaskforce and began reposting our tweets (messages) to support the agency. With holiday summer sausage in mind, a quick call to Christina led us to her uncle, Jeff, who didn’t have to think twice to offer us twice as much delicious Klement’s product than we asked for! As a result each Holiday bin recipient will be able to put out plenty of sausage and cheese plates for guests this year. Thank you Klement’s!

 

Scout Pack 574

Each November, Cub Scout Pack 574 from Edgerton Elementary School works on a community service project. This year, the boys decided to collect food for Hunger Task Force. In an effort to make the drive even bigger, they decided to join forces with the Girl Scouts from their school. These kids in grades 1 - 5 are well aware of how fortunate they are to have food available to them whenever they want. They find it hard to imagine what it might be like going without a meal for even one day, not to mention those who may go longer.

The boys and girls collected from their friends and families. They encouraged parents and relatives coming to their holiday concerts at school to bring a non-perishable food item with them and place it in the Hunger Task Force bins before the concerts. The Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts made posters to hang throughout the school to remind their classmates of the food drive.

Gift of the Month

When we asked Phil from Oak Creek if we could include his story in our Great Examples of Giving, he politely declined. He explained he wasn't stopping by our office for any sort of recognition, he just wanted to do what he could to help. He sensed our disappointment and agreed we could share his story, but not his full name or image. Phil stops by once a month, twelve months a year, to drop off much needed infant formula. Phil does not have little ones at home, this isn't leftover or extra formula. He makes a special trip to the store to make this special, expensive purchase each month, then stops by the office to quietly donate.

We respectfully are not sharing his image or his last name, but we happily share his story and his great example of giving.

 

MillerCoors hits a home run!

After a long day at the MillerCoors Brewery, employees will stop into the Frederick Miller Pub (or Fred’s Pub if you are in the know…) to unwind. Instead of the standard pool table or darts, this bar features a flat screen TV and a Nintendo Wii set-up for the employees to compete with each other for bragging rights. To launch the newest addition to Fred’s Pub, Guest Relations Coordinator Matt Mleziva held a Home Run Derby with the Wii Sports game and charged players $1 or one can of food to enter. The top 3 sluggers won prizes and all proceeds benefit the Hunger Task Force.
http://www.millercoors.com

 

Cranksgiving

When people think Milwaukee, they think cycles. Sure, we are home to one of the most internationally recognized motorcycling companies, but we also have a historic tie to bicycling culture: Milwaukee has been the proud home of bike messengers since 1891, when a charming 12-year old convinced Western Union that he could deliver packages faster than any horse or man. The rest, as they say, is history.

More recently, the non-motorized version of cycling is gaining popularity once more, thanks to the stylistic rise of the fixed gear bicycle. Bike messengers and fixed-gear enthusiasts alike have created a subclulture unto themselves, and have begun to participate in a national movement to use cycling to give back to those less fortunate. Enter Cranksgiving, a ten-year old commitment from bike racers across the nation to fill their messenger bags for the hungry. For the past two years Steve Kasprzyk has been organizing this alley-cat ract to benefit Hunger Task Force. This year the cyclists took to the streets bringing in over 1,000 pounds of food!

 

Breakfast is on Roundy’s

Vivian King and the folks at Roundy’s know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day better than most, with their Pick 'n Save, Copps and Metro Market stores found throughout Wisconsin. On the week before Thanksgiving they backed a truck completely full of Roundy’s Corn Flakes, Tasteeos, and Frosted Shredded Wheat to our dock. Hunger Task Force staff unloaded 28 pallets (that’s 7,920 boxes!) of cereal to distribute to folks who may be skipping breakfast because well, they can’t afford to eat THREE whole meals a day. But for Roundy’s that wasn’t enough. They wrote a check for over $14,000 above and beyond the cereal to take care of milk and other breakfast items. Thank you to Roundy’s a local company that knows the people in our community and works hard to make sure that no one has to skip a meal, especially breakfast.

 

Gobble For Groceries

The Tau Kappa Epsilon brothers (or “Tekes”) at UW-Milwaukee aren’t your average fraternity. They don’t do panty raids or leave horses in the Dean’s office. They help feed the hungry and they do it in style. In the weeks before Thanksgiving when you drive up and down Oakland Avenue near the UWM campus, look out for giant turkeys and pilgrims running up and down the sidewalk raising food and money for Hunger Task Force. Stop by the Open Pantry right next to their house and buy some groceries or just throw a couple bucks at them. It all goes toward fighting hunger. They have raised more than 4000 pounds of food since 2004 for Hunger Task Force. A great big thank you to the Tekes for making the commitment to fight hunger and no, we don’t really need to know what is in those red plastic cups you are holding while you are doing it.

 

Evan's Lemonade

In the summer of 2009 a young man growing up in the suburbs of Milwaukee decided that he was going to do more with his vacation than play video games or watch TV. He was going to set up a good, old fashioned lemonade stand! Sweet story, right? Well it gets better. Evan wasn't just selling lemonade to make money for himself, he wanted to raise money for Hunger Task Force so he could help out kids in Milwaukee who weren't as fortunate as he is. Over the course of the summer, which was not especially hot which was not so good for business, Evan and his staff (CJ, seated on the left) raised $100 for his hungry neighbors. This is easily the largest amount ever donated by a boy with funds raised by selling lemonade. And that is what makes it a great example of giving!