Cans Across Keene Hunger Brigade
KEENE, N.H. 3/6/06 - On Saturday, April 29, more than 900 people from Keene and the Keene State College community will line Main Street to pass collected canned goods hand-to-hand from the KSC President’s House to the Community Kitchen (just north of the Square at 37 Mechanic St.). To participate in this event, bring a can of food and find a space along the west side of Main Street at 10 a.m. Student coordinators will be assigned to each block along the route.
The brigade, now in its third year, will conclude a week of festivities celebrating the inauguration of President Helen Giles-Gee, who is committed to community and service learning on campus. “Service is central to the mission of Keene State College, and I am honored that our students have chosen this activity to celebrate my inauguration,” she said. “I am an educator because I believe that education can transform individual lives and the communities they live in, and people cannot learn when they are hungry. If there is hunger in our community, we must step forward to assist.”
This year each can of food donated and passed will be matched with $1 from a local donor (up to $25,000) and an additional $1 donation from the Feinstein Foundation. For eight years the Feinstein Foundation has distributed $1 million annually to hunger-relief agencies based on the amount of food and money collected in food and fundraising drives - the more food and money an agency collects, the more money it receives from the Feinstein Challenge. The National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness (NSCAHH) provides resources, educational materials, and support for the challenge.
KSC Office of Community Service AmeriCorps VISTA member Patrick Alley and four KSC students attended the NSCAHH conference this year to prepare for the brigade. “We need nearly 1,000 people to make this happen,” says Alley. “And thousands of cans of food to last the hour.”
C&S; Wholesale Grocers is making another large commitment of canned food for this year’s Cans Across Keene brigade. “This is a terrific effort and an important way to help students and the public understand that there are an increasing number of local families who are at risk of hunger,” said Gina Goff, Director of Corporate Giving. “In Keene and elsewhere across the Monadnock Region and the country, it will be a good day when food insecurity is not a way of life for some people. C&S; supports the National Student Campaign Against Hunger at Keene State, and we regularly donate food to the Keene Kitchen, so getting involved with the brigade again is an activity we’re proud of,” she added.
The Community Kitchen is a Monadnock United Way Agency that provides hot meals, take-home food boxes, and advocacy to low and moderate-income men, women, and families with children in the Monadnock region. Jodi Forcier, the Community Kitchen’s community relations manager, says that last year’s hunger brigade collected thousands of pounds of food. “The cans are sorted at the Kitchen and then sent out to families in Keene,” she said. “Approximately 680 families get food from us every week.”
For more information, contact Patrick Alley at palley@keene.edu.
