Blue Ridge Area Food Bank Kellogg Delivery

Yesterday I left the office and took a sunny drive up to Verona, VA where the headquarters for the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank are located. As detailed in a previous blog post, between January 26 and February 25, Kellogg and UVa Dining partnered on a food donation program called "Share Your Bowl" in which Kellogg donated an equivalent match to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank for every bowl of cereal eaten at UVa's three residential dining locations. Kellogg predicted at the start of the partnership that it would donate about 6,400 servings of cereal to the food bank; the program exceeded expectations and resulted in an impressive 10,944 servings ultimately being donated!

The cases of cereal were donated to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank headquarters yesterday, and I documented the delivery. It's pretty amazing to see all those boxes together and to be able to visualize the impact that this cereal is going to have on many deserving children in central Virginia. The cereal donation came in individual serving packs, which, as Food Sourcing Manager Greg Knight explained to me yesterday, will be utilized in the food bank's BackPack Program.

From a food bank brochure: "The BackPack Program ensures that children at risk of hunger have food to eat when school-based resources are not available, such as weekends and school vacations. Each Friday, or the day before a school vacation, children receive backpacks full of nutritious foods to take home." The program applies to elementary schools in which more than 50% of its students receive free and reduced-price school lunches through the National School Lunch Program. This donated cereal will go directly into backpacks for those underserved schoolkids.

UVa Dining is proud to have been a part of enabling the continued success of something as worthwhile as the BackPack Program, and looks forward to continuing its partnership with both Kellogg and the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank.