Finding new ways to help provide more food

Last night at the Gold Seal Awards Dinner, Jim Guarrera of Carey & Guarrera received one of the prestigious awards for his dedicated community service. Jim has been involved with many Valley organizations down through the years, but in recent years has been heavily involved with the St. Vincent DePaul Society which became United Way's newest partner agency earlier this year. Jim has seen a explosive growth in the need for food for clients that has been duplicated across the Valley with every agency that provides food for those in need.

Earlier this year, Jim came up with a great idea to prevent waste, do a bit of "recycling" and help alleviate hunger all at the same time. Because of St. Vincent DePaul's past involvement with our Corporate Volunteer Council's Harvest House projects, he knew that Valley United Way has a very strong interest in hunger in the Valley. In addition to Harvest House, we have also been working with the Postal Workers on the annual food drive that they do in the spring. He also knew that United Way has been a leader in the use of electronic technologies that might come into play on his project. Jim apprached Pat Tarasovic and myself with his idea to raise more funds not only for St. Vincent DePaul, but for all the agencies that have food pantries.

Jim's idea is fairly simple, but requires some work to implement. He noted that there are many people throughout the area who purchase tickets for sporting and cultural events and never use them. He asked, "Why don't we ask those people to donate unused tickets to be sold at their face value and the proceeds used to buy more food"? He even had a catchy name for the project - soupbowltickets.com. It sounded practical for us, so we sat down and started to work on the concept. A website will be developed where the story of the need can be told and the donated tickets can be sold.

The first step was to get a grip on the need and to examine just what is being accomplished and how. We convened a meeting of the providers, and they have helped compile data on what they are currently doing and the gap for unfilled needs.

At that point, a remarkable thing happened. Griffin Hospital approached United Way for help in implementing a very ambitious gift that they wanted to make in the form of a full trailer truck of new food for the community! We temporarily shifted gears from Jim's concept to coordinating Grffin's amazing gift. You can read the story of that remarkable gift by clicking here.

That was quickly followed by the Postal Wrokers drive and then our Corporate Volunteer Council's Harvest House project. (Full story & video - http://www.valleyunitedway.org/VAC/weekofcaring/2009/news.htm).
Those were all incredible success stories, but not enough to keep up with the increasing demand. St. Vincent DePaul has already run out of food!

Last night, Jim spurred us all back to action during his touching acceptance speech. He publicly announced our intent to make soupbowltickets.com a reality. On top of that, he announced that the Valley Board of Realtors is making a doantion of $1,000 to help get the project up and running. We're not there yet, but we'll let you know when we are ready.

In the meantime, if you are interested in the project, please contact us. Let us know what you think of the project and maybe even your willingness to get involved!

For more information about Valley United Way, visit our website at www.valleyunitedway.org.