I know that not many of my readers live in the New York City area, or even in New York. However I’d like to share this charitable event for those of you who are in the area and perhaps inspire others around the country to hold a similar event to help fight hunger.
City Harvest, the world’s first food rescue organization dedicated to feeding hungry New Yorkers is asking New Yorkers to donate the price of lunch during the week of May 12 – May 26, 2014 to help City Harvest to provide food for hungry children and their families over the summer.
To support this year’s Skip Lunch Fight Hunger campaign, City Harvest has created an inflatable version of it’s iconic brown lunch bag. The bag measures 10′ tall by 5′ wide. It will appear in well trafficked areas of Manhattan Monday, May 12th through May 15th. It will serve as an inspiration to New Yorkers to help feed our city’s hungry children during the summer months when access to school meals become limited. Just $10, the cost of an average lunch, can help feed 41 children. You read that correctly – 41 children!
This year’s gold is $735,000, which will feed more than 33,000 children and their families.
City Harvest’s Skip Lunch Fight Hunger 10 Brown Bags will be in place from 12 noon to 2:00 PM from Monday, May 12th to May 15th at the following locations;
Monday, May 12th: Flatiron Place between Broadway and 5th Avenue, near 23rd Street
Tuesday, May 13th: Herald Square between Broadway and 6th Avenue near 34th Street
Wednesday, May 14th: Foley Square between Lafayette and Centre Streets
Thursday, May15th: Chelsea Plaza – 9th Avenue near 14th Street
In addition, on Friday, May 16th, the Empire State Building will be lit in green in honor of City Harvest’s fight against hunger in New York City.
Each day the Brown Bag appearances, City Harvest will invite New Yorkers to participate in the Skip Lunch Fight Hunger Selfie Challenge. Anyone who follows City Harvest (@CityHarvest) and tweets his or her selfie with the bag, using the Skip Lunch Fight Hunger hashtag is entered to win a prize. The Grand Prize winner will receive 2 VIP tickets to City Harvest’s Summer In The City.
The hashtag is #SkipLunchFightHunger.
Nearly one in four children living in New York City resides in a food insecure home meaning they don’t always know when their next meal will be. Many of these children rely on the meals served to them in school. When school lets out for the summer acess to meals becomes harder as they are more limited. This will add more strain on families who already struggle to put food on the table.
This year City Harvest will collect more than 46 million pounds of excess foods from all segments of the food industry and deliver the food to more than 500 community food programs throughout New York City. These programs help feel nearly two million New Yorkers who face hunger each year.
I realize that not all of my readers are in the New York City area, however I am sure that there are similar programs in your community. Something like this would also make a great charitable campaign that schools and organizations can put together to help raise funds to feed the hungry in your neighborhood.
If you would like more information please visit SkipLunch.org.
Kimberly
*I was not compensated for this post. I posted this for the benefit of this charitable campaign.