The Full Plate
F E E D I N G
O U R
H U N G R Y
N E I G H B O R S
Fa l l 2 0 1 3
®
In this issue
Walmart Donations
Save Pantry
Associates champion Direct
Connect program
Plant a seed
watch a community grow
Gardening provides hope for hungry neighbors
p r e s i d e n t
Fill a Box
T
here is nothing extravagant about
a box. It’s a piece of cardboard
signifying unknown potential. When
it is fully assembled, it is still just a box. It
remains empty until an item occupies the
space where it can become something more.
As we look forward to the upcoming holiday
season, we work tirelessly to fill that space
with the hope a holiday meal provides to those
who otherwise would do without this simple tradition.
Each day can be a struggle for a family facing hunger. That
struggle is amplified when the holidays roll around. Advertisements
are plastered on billboards and commercials run non-stop about
being together at a table to share a meal and a story or two. Those
ads don’t always depict real life.
The reality is more than 425,000 people face hunger in northern
Illinois. That is enough people to fill Soldier Field seven times.
We encourage you to help us make a holiday meal possible for
a family, or families, who can’t. A $30 donation will provide a box
containing a turkey, potatoes, gravy, vegetables, fruit, and dessert –
all the items needed to have a traditional holiday meal – for a local
family in need.
Last year we distributed over 30,000 of these boxes through our
network partners. This year, we want to do more. Please consider
making a donation.
Thank you to our wonderful community of supporters for all that
you do in helping us feed our hungry neighbors. With you by our
side, I know that together, we can solve hunger.
Sincerely,
Pete Schaefer, President and CEO
F r o m
t h e
Fall 2013
2 / 3 Hunger Action Month
We’re Gold Because
You Went Orange
I
n May, Northern Illinois Food Bank received a Golden
Trumpet Award from the Publicity Club of Chicago for
our 2012 Hunger Action Month Go Orange Day media
relations campaign. We presented TV anchors with Go
Orange T-shirts and asked them to support hunger awareness
by wearing orange on the air. The campaign was a major
success. News anchors on all Chicago and Rockford TV
stations mentioned the food bank and the work we do to help
feed hungry people. Many wore orange on-air and encouraged
viewers to do the same in support of Hunger Action Month
along with sharing the message via social media.
We’re going orange again this year and we need your help!
On Thursday, September 5, you can “Go Orange” and
show your support for Hunger Awareness. Wear an orange
shirt, Dine Out for Hunger, help us ‘fill a plate,’ encourage
your workplace to light up your company orange or simply put
up a flyer in your business window to let everyone know you
support Northern Illinois Food Bank in its efforts to feed our
hungry neighbors. Be sure to post photos of your “orange”
efforts on our Facebook page.
To download a Hunger Action Month flyer or to learn
other ways you can get involved in Hunger Action Month,
log on to www.SolveHungerToday.org/HAM
The F ull P l ate
The Shorewood Walmart store donated the
equivalent of 102,100 meals last year.
®
Facing uncertainty
Walmart Donations
Save Pantry
Gail, Walmart associate, helps John and Cameron, Warren-Sharpe Community Center, with a donation of food.
W
arren-Sharpe Community
Center was in a precarious
position. Demand for food
was increasing at the food
pantry, but its funding
stream was running dry.
“The number of people coming in was
going up,” said Kay Bolden, executive director
of Warren-Sharpe Community Center in Joliet.
“It was the first time in my memory that I had
to turn people away; we had no food. That was
horrendous, absolutely horrendous.”
On the verge of a tough decision about the
center’s future, Kay found a saving grace within
the community: her local Walmart.
As part of the food bank’s Direct Connect
program, the center picks up perishable
foods, produce and packaged goods nearing
their sell-by date from the Shorewood
store four to five times a week. In 2012, the
Shorewood Walmart donated the equivalent
of 102,100 meals to the pantry.
“The Walmart connection saved the food
pantry,” Bolden said. “Because of Walmart,
we didn’t have to turn anyone away. We had
produce, canned goods, dairy, and meat. We
get such a variety of fresh food. The people we
serve have a much better variety of food and
are eating much better.”
The program not only kept the pantry doors
open; it helped the center double the number
of families it serves from 400 to 800 per month.
“I think that in years past, when Walmart
did not participate in the program, of all the
waste we created and the potential we had to
help people,” said Jeff Faron, store manager,
Walmart #2956. “I’m glad we identified that
opportunity and we’re making use of it.
“I’m proud to work for a company that realizes its responsibility of giving back to the community and being a
good neighbor, and actually doing it and participating in a program like this,” Gail Basar, Walmart Associate.
www.SolveHungerToday.org
I
t has been said a garden can be your sanctuary. It is a place
where all the cares and worries of the world can melt away.
You plant a seed and watch it grow into something miraculous.
This year when you are working in your garden, please
take a moment to think about your neighbors who are facing
tough decisions when it comes to having enough food for their
family. Fresh produce may not be a viable option for families
with limited budgets.
So we present a challenge for you to accomplish next year.
Will you set aside part of your garden and donate the produce to
Northern Illinois Food Bank or your local food pantry? A little seed
can go a long way in feeding our hungry neighbors.
In this issue, we are featuring four different locations in our service
area that have created a community garden to provide high-quality
produce for our neighbors in need.
What is Grown
and Shared?
What is Grown
and Shared?
Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant,
Broccoli, beets, romaine, bell
zucchini, cucumbers, collard
pepper, potatoes, cabbage,
greens, kale, swiss chard,
green onions, cauliflower,
onion, sweet basil and cilantro
mustard greens, kale, spinach,
onions and tomatoes
“Success comes from your community through giving
back and learning from it,” Koz.
4 / 5 “We want children to get the benefit of good
nutritious food,” Myrna.
North Chicago
High School
Rock River Valley
Food Pantry
As a coach, it is your job to push the team to limits they never
imagined possible. But what if members of your team had their
own limits when accessing food?
North Chicago High School (NCHS) Football coach and former
Chicago Bear Glen Kozlowski (Koz) realized this firsthand during
a football camp when players told him the best part of camp was
being able to eat three meals each day.
Koz knew he had to do something and shared his story
with Northern Illinois Food Bank. That led to the creation of a
community garden right next to the football field at North Chicago
High School and an afterschool feeding program. Produce from
the garden provides meals for the football team during their
long summer practices, and the abundance is donated to local
pantries in the food bank network to provide North Chicago
families facing hunger with fresh vegetables.
All items are planted and harvested by his football team
and members of the Future First Program, a program housed
in NCHS that is dedicated to building long-term relationships
between youth and employers.
“You want some tomatoes? What type of tomato plant do
you want?”
Myrna Pullen greeted each Rock River Valley Food Pantry
visitor in early May, and began to describe different types of
tomato plants available. Myrna is one of five volunteer Master
Gardeners tending to the plants in the 21 raised garden beds
and 12 half barrels located on a vacant parcel next to the pantry.
Each bed held fresh soil recently watered by rainwater
collected in barrels. A variety of vegetables filled each spot and
most were just weeks away from being ready to harvest.
In addition to providing plants for hungry neighbors to take
home, the bounty from the gardens will also be available for
those in need.
Myrna pondered the importance of being able to grow your
own produce and having it readily available.
“When you see kids try a new vegetable for the first time and
they like it, you can’t help but smile.” she said.
The F ull P l ate
What is Grown
and Shared?
What is Grown
and Shared?
Tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber,
Beans, tomatoes, peppers,
beets, carrots, radishes,
collard greens and herbs
eggplants, green peppers,
basil, jalapenos, celery, onions,
squash, garlic and herbs
“To get fresh produce that can sit on your counter or in your fridge for
six days, rather than ‘must eat immediately,’ is a treat,” Chris.
“The garden is not just to produce food, but to have an
outdoor classroom,” Kay.
Vacant to
Vegetables
Warren-Sharpe
Community Center
A neglected vacant lot can be an eyesore to a community.
While Chris Cordin Blitstein was looking out the window at
the empty lot next door in 2009, she was also listening to the
news about the recession and massive layoffs. This gave her
an idea. She gathered up some of her friends to plant a
vegetable garden on the land to benefit the needy, and Vacant
to Vegetables was born.
After the first season, Vacant to Vegetables moved to a much
larger 5,000-square-foot plot of land on the property of St.
Helena’s Episcopal Church in Burr Ridge. The 2012 growing
season was their best yet—they harvested about 2,100 pounds
of fresh produce, all of which gets donated to People’s Resource
Center, a network partner of Northern Illinois Food Bank.
The volunteers at Vacant to Vegetables pick the produce as
it’s ready throughout the summer and early fall. “We time our
harvest to coincide with the pantry days.” said Chris, so that
hungry families visiting People’s Resource Center will have
vegetables that are as fresh as possible.
The neighborhood surrounding Warren-Sharpe Community
Center in Joliet is a “food desert.” Residents lack access to
fresh and affordable food to sustain a healthy diet.
While Warren-Sharpe’s food pantry provides fresh produce
when available, Kay recognized there was an opportunity to
do more when people visiting the pantry were bypassing fresh
fruits and vegetables because they didn’t know what they were or
how to use them.
“We’d have these beautiful baby eggplants, and spaghetti
squashes, and all these really cool vegetables and my clients
would go, ‘what is that?’” Kay said.
In late June, the dirt was tilled and the seeds planted to
start a community garden on a lot across the street from the
center donated by the City of Joliet. Funding for the project
came, in part, from the Will County Community Foundation and
the Campaign for Human Development.
The center has partnered with University of St. Francis to develop
the garden into a place where community members can learn
about gardening and nutrition, and take part in tending to the plants.
www.SolveHungerToday.org
“It's an opportunity to feel of service to
the community, to grow our business and
hopefully to be on the forefront of greater
efficiency in our food system,” Tim Slepicka.
Locally grown
From Farm
to Pantry
Northern Illinois Food Bank will receive 172,000 ears of locally grown sweet corn through September.
B
eing in the right place at the right
time can sometimes lead to a
valuable connection that benefits the
community. Northern Illinois Food
Bank had one of those moments this spring.
Steve Ericson, Northern Illinois Food Bank’s
director of procurement, was speaking at a
recent Farm Bureau event about the challenges
of getting fresh produce to our hungry
neighbors when he met the Slepickas, a threegeneration farm family from Maple Park.
Steve mentioned that much of the fresh
fruits and vegetables available to the food
bank are provided through the Feeding
America network from farmers out of state.
Securing more local produce will help the food
bank cut transportation costs, while ensuring
that the food is still fresh when it reaches our
hungry neighbors.
The Slepicka family saw an opportunity
to expand their sweet corn business while
helping people in need. Through this new
food bank connection, our hungry neighbors
will receive freshly picked, local sweet corn
throughout the summer.
“[There is] surplus built-in up and down
the supply chain,” said Tim Slepicka. “If it is a
question of dumping your surplus in the field or
supplying it to someone who can benefit from
it, well, it just made sense to us.”
The Slepicka Family will provide the food
bank with more than 172,000 ears of sweet
corn over 10 weeks. Two weekly deliveries
will ensure the corn is the freshest it can
be without going to the field and picking it
yourself. The corn will be picked in the morning
and delivered to the food bank where it will be
packaged by food bank volunteers that same
afternoon, and go out to our network partner
feeding programs the next day.
The partnership is beneficial on many levels:
it provides the farmer with a guaranteed market
for his crop; the food bank has a guaranteed
supply of freshly-picked sweet corn; our hungry
neighbors receive sweet corn that was picked
fresh from the field the day before; corn that
may have been plowed under is feeding our
hungry neighbors; and transportation costs and
fuel consumption are significantly lowered by
purchasing locally.
“This partnership will hopefully lay the
groundwork as a model for expanding
relationships with additional area producers
to economically acquire increasingly
more locally-grown fresh produce for our
network partners and the hungry neighbors,”
said Ericson.
Best in Paradise
T
he 8th Annual “Best in Paradise” event
on June 22 at the Lombardi Club in
Rockford raised over $7,000 for Northern
Illinois Food Bank. This Jimmy Buffet
themed "party with a purpose" consisted
of two contests: the "Best Cheeseburger
in Paradise" and the "Best Margarita in
Paradise." Thank you to the committed Best
in Paradise planning committee, generous
event sponsors, volunteers, and attendees
for the event’s success!
66 // 77 The
The FFull
ull PPllate
ate
Mission
Moments
I
n April, the food bank marked the 30th anniversary of its very first
distribution. A lot has changed since 1983, but our commitment to feeding
our hungry neighbors is just as strong as it was when Sister Rosemarie
Burian made the first distribution of 288 pounds of food to Family Shelter in
Glen Ellyn.
We asked food bank staff, volunteers and supporters to tell us about
their favorite food bank moments. We share here a few of them:
“I wrote a grant to a local Kiwanis Club which had denied all our previous
requests. A few weeks later, I gave two Kiwanis members a last-minute tour
of the food bank’s Loves Park facility. Soon after, the club’s charity committee
notified us that our grant request was approved. I learned that before the
visit, the club had planned to turn us down, but the two Kiwanians had
gone back and convinced their membership to fund us. The committee said
my tour was ‘the reason they changed their minds.’ I felt successful as a
Community Engagement VISTA for the food bank’s Northwest Center.”
–Julia Friberg, Northern Illinois Food Bank VISTA
“The best moment for me is every time I see my son, John, grow and
succeed as a volunteer and giving back to the community. Volunteering has
given him skills and purpose and a sense of community. I am grateful to all
the staff and volunteers that embrace him every shift. He has learned how
to use the hand pallet truck and work as part of a team. His self-confidence
grows with every shift.”
–David Wagner, Northern Illinois Food Bank Volunteer
“We were excited at the opportunity to support Northern Illinois Food Bank’s
capital campaign. When individuals and families don’t have enough to eat it
makes it harder to succeed at work or school, undercutting the stability of our
communities. The McCormick Foundation’s commitment to helping alleviate
hunger has been a longstanding one and Northern Illinois Food Bank is a
leader in providing hunger relief to help strengthen our communities.”
–David Hiller, President & CEO, Robert R. McCormick Foundation
!
Us
o
t
atter
you M
T
his issue, we feature Avnet, an employee
volunteer group that started volunteering in
2004 at the request of the late Pat Lyons, after
whom the food bank’s Volunteer of the Year West
Suburban Center Award is named. Cara Schiavone of
Avnet answers our questions.
Avnet
How did Avnet get involved? The late Pat Lyons
used to volunteer with his church. He got a few Avnet
volunteers involved and the news about how fun it was
spread. We have had growing interest in our volunteer
nights within our customer and supplier community
as well as our families and friends. We come the first
Tuesday of the month as a group. Pat originally set up
our recurring volunteer nights, and we’ve been going
ever since.
Why does Avnet support the food bank? The food
bank is near and dear to many of us. It was Pat’s
charity of choice, and after losing him to cancer, we
all decided to honor the food bank in his name. We
all see the growing need for help all around us. We all
feel a responsibility not to ignore it. Among other many
things, we hold an Annual Benefit & Volunteer night in
honor of Pat to raise money for the food bank. In 2012,
we raised $14,000.
Lawyers Feeding Illinois
J
ohn E. Theis, left, president of the Illinois State Bar Association and Pete
Schaefer, president and CEO of Northern Illinois Food Bank, discuss the
statewide ISBA's Lawyers Feeding Illinois food and fund drive, which provided
$135,000 to Northern Illinois Food Bank, enough to provide 800,000 meals for
our hungry neighbors.
Favorite food bank moment: “I would say my favorite
food bank moment was when Pat Lyons organized the
very first Avnet Family & Friends night in July of 2009.
We had a great turnout, and we all had so much fun
working together. My family has been volunteering as
they are able, ever since,” said Cara Schiavone.
“When the food bank President told Nanci Lyons that
they were renaming the Volunteer of the Year Award
after Pat Lyons, her late husband and our dear friend.
After losing his battle with cancer, it was an emotional
moment for all of us. He got us all started and I am
happy to be part of it for Avnet,” said Frank Finazzo.
www.SolveHungerToday.org
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Upcoming Activities
See our complete calendar of events
at www.SolveHungerToday.org
August 23
October 3
15th Annual Hunger Scramble Golf Outing
Prairie Landing Golf Club, West Chicago
Stars and Cars
Lake Forest Sports Cars, Lake Bluff
For more information visit: www.SolveHungerToday.org/golf
September is Hunger Action Month
Dine Out for Hunger – September 5-13
Go Orange Day – September 5
October 20
Barrington CROP Hunger Walk
Barrington, Location TBD
Create a team to “Fill a Plate” for your hungry neighbors!
For more information visit: www.crowdrise.com/FillaPlate
October 20
For a list of all Hunger Action Month activities, visit
www.SolveHungerToday.org/HAM
Naperville Area CROP Walk
Grace United Methodist Church
300 E. Gartner Rd.
September 25
Strike Out Hunger hosted by Northern Illinois Food
Bank’s Young Professionals Board
Tivoli Bowl, Downers Grove
For more information visit: www.crowdrise.com/StrikeOutHunger
October 20
Tri-Cities (Batavia, Geneva, St. Charles) CROP Hunger Walk
Saint Charles, Location TBD
Visit solvehungertoday.org for more information
“Like” us on Facebook to find out the
latest happenings at the food bank.
Send comments/questions about articles in
this issue to cstrupp@northernilfoodbank.org