Tragically, one in five kids live in a household that struggles to put food on the table. In Pierce County alone, there were more than 113,000 visits a month to food programs—33% of those being children under the age of 18. It’s no surprise that chronic hunger and malnutrition can affect a child’s health, their ability to learn in school and future economic prosperity.
As our way of helping to end childhood hunger, we teamed up with Northwest Harvest, Emergency Food Network and the Oregon Food Bank to host a month-long food drive during August. Each of our branches had collection bins for kid-friendly non-perishable food items or people could make cash donations.
In total, we collected 51,176 meals! We are overjoyed with the amount of support from our customers, employees and communities as we all came together to ensure our children get fed.
Chad Maiuri, senior vice president, south sound district manager, who helped lead this effort said, “Understanding the need to feed hungry children is important, and Heritage Bank’s Child Hunger Food Drive helped many kids not to worry about where their next meal was going to come from. It gives me great satisfaction to be part of an organization that brings about awareness and helps make a difference.”