Wells Fargo Food Drive July 15 – July 30

KSLX-FM’S Mark Mayfield & Sleep America to Host 5th Annual ‘Get In Bed With Mark’ Food Drive to Benefit St. Mary’s Food Bank

Three-day Radio-thon Runs From April 6-8 All Over The Valley With Goal Of Spreading the Word About Dire Hunger Issues Now Affecting Arizona

Phoenix – Fast-becoming an early-April Arizona tradition, KSLX (100.7 FM)’s morning man Mark Mayfield is getting ready to get back into his Sleep America bed for the fifth annual “Get in Bed with Mark” food drive to benefit St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance.

One of the Valley’s most popular morning personalities, Mayfield will begin his three-day live marathon at 6 a.m. on Wednesday, April 6 at Sleep America’s Glendale location at the Lane Home Furnishings Center (7291 W. Bell Road, Ste. 101A). He will literally hop into a Sleep America bed aboard a flat-bed truck and collect both non-perishable food items and cash donations for St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance – all while interviewing local celebrities, holding challenges, and talking about the need in Arizona.

At the end of the drive, Mayfield will raffle off the queen size Kingsdown bed, provided by Sleeping America, which will have served as his home for the three-day radiothon. And this year, Sleep America will introduce a new and exciting event for the last day. On April 8th, the Paradise Valley location will host “The Great Bed Race for Charity.” Five-member teams can still sign up for their place in the field with a $100 donation to the Food Bank.

“Get in Bed with Mark” collected more than 18,000 pounds of non-perishable food items and more than $14,000 in cash last year – providing more than 116,000 meals for St. Mary’s Food Bank to distribute to the hungry of Arizona. KSLX, Sleep America and St. Mary’s are all hoping to duplicate the success of last year’s event.

Mayfield and his Sleep America bed will leave the Glendale location at 10pm on the 6th, and from 6am – 10pm on Thursday, April 7, he will be at Tempe Marketplace (2010 E. Rio Salado Pkwy, Ste. 115) giving the East Valley listeners a chance to participate. The drive will finish off at the Paradise Valley Mall (4320 E. Cactus Road, Ste. A1) from 6am – 6 p.m. on Friday, April 8, with the Great Bed Race capping almost 50 hours live on the air.

For more information on the “Get in Bed with Mark” food drive or The Great Bed Race, visit www.kslx.com or www.sleepamerica.com.

Kids Cafe in Surprise calls for Volunteers with Grand Opening Approaching on April 7th

Posted: Wednesday, March 30, 2011 1:45 pm

By NORA AVERY-PAGE, DAILY NEWS-SUN | 0 comments

Volunteers from the Sun Cities who devote time to the St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance in Surprise don’t want Arizona children to go to bed hungry.

They see the faces of hunger while others just see statistics:

• One in four children in the state are living in poverty, amounting to more than 260,000 children in Maricopa Country alone.

• In Surprise, nearly 24 percent of households fall at or below the poverty level.

• Arizona ranks dead last in an America’s Health Ranking study with the greatest number of children in poverty.

The St. Mary’s Kids Cafe program is working toward changing those numbers by offering daily meals to impoverished children.

“Child hunger is getting worse,” said Laura Brill, the Kids Cafe manager, calling these statistics “disturbing and unacceptable.”

The program feeds about 1,700 school-age children at 32 different locations every day, but with a new building expansion, Brill hopes to expand that number to 3,000 over the summer and 4,000 by the end of the year.

The program will be moving next week to a renovated former storage space in the westside location of St. Mary’s, so volunteers and staff can pack, store and assemble the meals, which include sandwiches and fruit and vegetables, all in one place.

The volunteers appreciate the commitment to the westside location, said Jan Wells, who helps coordinate the volunteers.

“Everybody is very excited,” she said.

Wells hopes to expand the menu offered. Right now, volunteers make up ham sandwiches, beef and ranch wraps or other varieties of sandwiches.

“Our goal is to provide that nutritional meal,” she said.

Brill said children living in poverty don’t eat well because it’s usually the highly processed foods lacking in significant nutritional value that are the cheapest to buy and that leads not only to poorer general health, but fatigue, hospitalizations, behavioral difficulties and impaired performance in school.

Brill said the goal of the program, which exists on a combination of donations and government funding, is to give children consistent daily nutrition, and it’s about giving them both quantity and quality food.

“This is the future of Arizona, and we feel like we need to invest now,” Brill said.

It’s important to sustain that nutrition during the summer, and more difficult to do because the children aren’t in school, she said.

“We want to kind of keep them steady,” Brill said. “We want the kids to be ready for when school starts back up.”

The goal is to expand the Kids Cafe program to make 8,000 meals a day, but that’s a few years down the road, she said.

And for both the current and future expansion, the food bank needs new volunteers; both Brill and Wells emphasized their appreciation for the volunteers and the support of the Sun Cities and Surprise communities.

But it takes a lot of work, Brill said, stressing the need for volunteers looking for a more in-depth project who can adopt a Kids Cafe site to set up and track the program.

“We want to make sure we’re very mindful in our planning,” Brill said, explaining she doesn’t want to have to say to the children at the sites: “Sorry, we messed up, we’re not going to feed you anymore.”

If the program doesn’t get enough volunteers to visit sites, it can’t have as many locations and won’t be able to feed as many kids, Brill said.

The Kids Cafe program is also looking for potential new locations for the meal sites, which can be any place children have access to, from a church, playground or pool, or an apartment complex.

Volunteers interested in doing site visits can call Grace Rodil at 602-343-5629 or email her at mgrodil@firstfoodbank.org.

For volunteers looking to help prepare meals or do other work for St. Mary’s Westside location, call Jan Wells at 602-343-5637 or reach her by email at jkwells@firstfoodbank.org.

Different sites looking to participate can call Melissa Jensen at 602-647-1820

Thorpe Surgical collects enough food for 1,232 meals for St. Mary’s food Bank Alliance

St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance would like the thank the staff at Thorpe Surgical for collecting enough food to allow St. Mary’s to distribute 1,232 meals during their recent Food Drive. It’s just one of more than 1,700 food drives that were held for the Food Bank during 2009-10, collecting more than 1.7 million pounds of non-perishable food for Emergency Food Boxes and our 500 member agencies around Arizona.

Thank you, Thorpe Surgical!

http://thorpesurgical.com/

HELP ST. MARY’S FOOD BANK ALLIANCE AUG. 11 AND RECEIVE A LITTLE SLICE OF HEAVEN FROM THE BILTMORE CHEESECAKE FACTORY

First 100 People Who Donate Five Cans or Five Dollars Will Receive Reece’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Cheesecake; Earn Chance At American Idol Tickets

Last year it was the Cheesecake Factory’s Stephanie’s Red Velvet Cheesecake that enticed friends of St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance to donate more than 3,000 canned food items to the fight against hunger.

This year, the Biltmore Fashion Park Cheesecake Factory at 2402 East Camelback Road is back to help St. Mary’s – and will hand out slices of its brand new Reece’s® Peanut Butter and Chocolate Cake Cheesecake to the first 100 people who donate at least five cans or five dollars to the Food Bank. The giveaway begins at 8 a.m. on Aug. 11 and will continue until noon – or until the last slice has been spoken for.

There is an added bonus this year. Donors also eligible to enter a drawing on-site for one of six pair of tickets to the American Idol LIVE! Concert at US Airways Center on Thursday, Aug. 12. Winners will be notified after noon on Aug. 11 and will pick up their tickets at the Will Call booth at the USAC on the day of the show.

Last year, St. Mary’s collected the most cans of any Food Bank during a 30-city national tour of Cheesecake Factories from coast-to-coast, providing more than 5,000 meals for hungry Arizonans – not to mention those who got their slice of Stephanie’s Red Velvet. Don’t let this second chance at an incredible dessert pass you by!

MCMURRY MARKETING GATHERS NEARLY 22,000 DIAPERS FOR ST. MARY’S FOOD BANK’S DIAPER PROGRAM THROUGH COMPANY-WIDE DRIVE

Diapers Desperately Needed To Meet Requests From Partner Agencies; McMurry employees filled St. Mary’s Truck With Diapers on Friday, July 9

Responding to an important and expensive need for struggling families this summer, McMurry, a marketing communications firm, collected 21,888 diapers during a month-long, company-wide diaper drive to benefit the St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance Diaper program.

McMurry’s employees embraced the challenge of meeting the need in friendly but competitive fashion – working to fill the office of CEO Chris McMurry with diapers with the winning team earning a breakfast with McMurry for their efforts. In an age where “designer diapers” are all the rage, many families struggling with food insecurity and choosing between food and things like rent and utilities can’t afford a regular change of diapers that can cost as much as $100 a month.

On Friday, July 9 at 11 a.m. McMurry employees formed a “human chain” at their offices (1010 E. Missouri Avenue) and transfered the diapers from the CEO’s office to a St. Mary’s delivery truck for the trip to the Dell E. Webb Distribution Center.

What an amazing effort pulled together by this local business, we are very grateful for their hard work and support! Way to go McMurry and team!

PLEASE HELP WELLS FARGO COLLECT FOOD FOR ARIZONA FOOD BANKS

The only statewide food drive in Arizona, the annual Wells Fargo summer food drive to benefit the Association of Arizona Food Banks continues until July 31 with collection bins in all 261 Wells Fargo Community Banking Stores across Arizona.

More than 100,000 pounds of food was collected through the drive last year and is one of the largest corporate drives in Arizona each year. The donations benefit St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance and the other members of the Association of Arizona Food Banks, which collectively distributed more than 110 million pounds of food to the hungry of our state last year through 1,600 sites.

Those who wish to donate cash to the drive – for St. Mary’s every dollar in donations can lead to the distribution of seven meals into the community – checks can be made payable to the Association of Arizona Food Banks and sent to 2100 N. Central Ave., Ste. 230, Phoenix, AZ 85004. Donations can also be made online at http://www.azfoodbanks.org

American Express donates $30,000 to fill Emergency Food Boxes this summer!

St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance extends sincere thanks to the American Express Charitable Fund for their efforts to “Send Hunger Packing” this summer.

On Friday, June 11, American Express Director of Public Affairs Christa Burkhalter presented St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance President and CEO Terry Shannon with a grant for $30,000 to be used to fill Emergency Food Boxes this summer. The demand for these life-sustaining boxes has doubled in the last two years. St.Mary’s has distributed more than 145,000 boxes in the first five months of 2010.

The gift from American Express will help St. Mary’s ensure that everyone in need of food during the long, hot summer will be able to rely on the food bank for help.

American Express plans to continue its partnership with St. Mary’s by holding a food drive in the fall. Valley companies and organizations like American Express continue to step up and take a stand in the fight against hunger in Arizona, and the Food Bank is extremely appreciative of their awareness and efforts.

Thank you, American Express!

IT’S ALL DOWNSTREAM FROM HERE: NSCC’S “TON OF TUNA” DRIVE CONCLUDES THIS WEEK!

Help the North Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce as it enters the home stretch of its first tuna drive to benefit St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance.

Hoping to collect “A Ton of Tuna,” the NSCC will accept donations at their offices all this week (14201 N. 87th Street, Suite 131 in Scottsdale) and will also accept donations at St. Mary’s Del E. Webb Distribution Center (2831. N. 31st Avenue) on Saturday, June 12 as the chamber drops off its collection before taking part in a day of volunteering at the Food Bank. You can even stick around and help pack some Emergency Food Boxes.

Call the chamber at (480) 889-8987 or log on at http://www.northscottsdalechamber.org for more information.

ST. MARY’S FOOD BANK ALLIANCE PREPARES FOR 8TH ANNUAL ‘DIAPER DUMP DAY’ ON MAY 1; PUBLIC ASKED TO HOLD APRIL DIAPER DRIVES

Event Goal is to Collect 25,000 Diapers for Needy Families and Seniors

Seeking to ease the burden on low-income families and seniors on fixed incomes who struggle to afford diapers, St. Mary’s Food Bank is asking churches, schools, scout troops, employee groups and individuals to start collecting disposable diapers for the 8th annual Valley Diaper Drive.

St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance has assumed the program from Valley of the Sun Diaper Community Bank, which has collected more than 1 million diapers since its creation in 2002, nearly 800,000 of which were collected in just the last five years.

St. Mary’s will team with Discount Tire, 98.7 FM The Peak, KTAR AM/FM and Sunflower Farmers Markets to collect the diapers and will culminate the drive with a “Diaper Dump Day” collection event from 9 am to noon on Saturday, May 1 at the Sunflower Farmers Market (3rd Street and Bell Road in Phoenix). St. Mary’s personnel and volunteers will be on hand to accept donations and offer an opportunity to enter a drawing for prizes.

Organizing a drive is as easy as asking church members to bring in an unopened package of disposable diapers to services, or holding a contest in your office to see which area can collect the most diapers. Eagle Scouts, Bar Mitzvah candidates and other service groups have staged successful drives, collecting diapers in unique ways.

Every donation helps families and seniors faced with making the decision between purchasing these items and paying for items such as housing and utilities. A healthy change of diapers can cost $100 a month or more, and the current economic conditions put this expense out of reach for many. Safety-net programs like Women, Infants and Children (WIC), Medicare and SNAP (food stamps) do not cover the cost of baby and adult diapers.

St. Mary’s Food Bank does not distribute the diapers to individuals, but does work with other nonprofit organizations, government agencies and faith-based groups.

“Even in less stressful and dire times, families struggle to pay for diapers,” said St. Mary’s President and CEO Terry Shannon. “This year our partner agencies report increased demand from families and from people who have lost their jobs or homes in this economy. We are indebted to those in the community who can support this drive with their diaper or monetary donations.”