Why we're proud to partner with Harvesters
At Summit, we are dedicated to building and supporting strong communities in Kansas City and we feel it is both our privilege and our responsibility to support organizations that are making a remarkable difference.
We are proud to assist Harvesters in their mission to end hunger by donating our time and providing financial support. We know that hunger knows no boundaries, and it is an unfortunate reality that many of our friends and neighbors struggle from time to time to make ends meet.
In Kansas and Missouri, 1 in 7 people is food insecure at any given time. Food insecurity means that even if a family has food today, they do not know if they will have food tomorrow or if there will be enough to feed the entire family.
Children under 18 make up 20% of the food insecure population in our area, and over 40% of those children live in households that do not qualify for federal nutrition programs. These families turn to charitable food assistance programs such as food pantries and homeless shelters for help. Keeping these programs supplied with nutritious food is no easy task.
Harvesters is a regional food bank serving a 26-county area of northwestern Missouri and northeastern Kansas. They provide food to more than 620 not-for-profit agencies including emergency food pantries, community kitchens, homeless shelters, and children’s homes.
Members of our Charitable Contributions Committee present Harvesters with a check for $20,000.
This year, our employee-led Charitable Contributions Committee voted to donate $20,000 to the Harvesters team.
Earlier this week our team went to work at Harvesters for a company-wide day of service. We toured the the Harvesters facility and learned about who their programs serve and how they were striving to meet the needs of a diverse population facing food insecurity. Then we got to work packing bags of food for the BackSnack program.
Harvesters’ BackSnack program provides a weekly backpack filled with nutritious, child-friendly food for schoolchildren to take home over the weekend. More than 100,000 children in Harvesters' service area receive free and reduced-price school meals during the week, and many of those are at risk of hunger on weekends.
If you follow us on
Facebook, you've probably figured out that we're a rather competitive bunch, and so of course we had to create a little friendly competition by dividing into teams to see who could pack the most bags. It was a close race that kept us furiously packing as fast as we could the entire time - the winning team squeaked by with only 34 more bags! All together, we packed more than 3,600 bags of food for kids to take home over the weekend.
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