Happy New Year, Flathead Valley! I hope you all had a lovely holiday season and that your wallets, waistlines and collective sanity survived in tact.
While you’re getting back into a regular routine (it’s difficult, I know), here’s something important to consider: Now that the holidays are over, local food banks enter into their toughest season. All of the folks I’ve talked to at the food banks in the Flathead said donations go up as the year winds down, but donating seems to go on the back-burner of most peoples’ minds once the jingle bells and Christmas trees and New Year’s confetti go back on the shelf.
With this in mind, Western States Cat and Albertsons are teaming up for the 2011 “Dump Hunger” campaign, during which both companies would like to fill three CAT 730 dump trucks with donated food. One of these beastly machines can hold about 75,000 pounds of food, so the goal (for those of you who are still fuzzy after New Year’s and can’t do the mental math yet) is 225,000 pounds of food.
Donations to the campaign can be brought to any Albertsons or Western States locations. The campaign will run until Feb. 7 throughout the Intermountain West.
In addition to customer food donations, ALBERTSONS will contribute $20,000 in food items to the participating food bank partners involved with Dump Hunger. Western States will contribute $1 for every 5 pounds of food collected, up to a $15,000 dollar match.
Here’s some more info on the campaign:
Dump Hunger is a post-holiday food drive sponsored by Western States Equipment. The five-week campaign partners the 13 Western States branch locations with local Albertsons stores and food banks that serve their shared communities. The post-holiday timing of Dump Hunger is critical for food banks as January and February mark the lowest levels of food donations. To date Dump Hunger has gathered 704,698 pounds of food for the communities it serves. Caterpillar recently recognized the Dump Hunger campaign as the Best Community Event by all CAT dealers in the United States for the second year in a row.
Participating Albertsons in Montana include the Kalispell and Missoula branches.