Category: Featured

2018 Community & Campus Day of Service

Over 151,000 meals packaged by UI Community & Campus

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A huge THANK YOU to everyone who volunteered for the 2018 Community & Campus Day of Service!!! We came together to package over 151,000 meals for the Eastern Illinois Foodbank, Midwest Mission Distribution Center, and many other organizations fighting hunger in our community. This would not have been possible without everyone’s time and effort, and the support of our many sponsors and donors who provided ingredients, funding, and other resources for the event. Thank you for your participation — as a result of your efforts, families in need in our local community will benefit.

This event bumped Illini Fighting Hunger over the 3,000,000 (yes, MILLION!) meal mark! Over the past 6 years, we have facilitated over 41,000 service hours from more than 24,000 volunteers.

Thank you to all those in our community who came out to lend their support to this event — we couldn’t have done it without you!

Register for the 2018 Day of Service!

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For the last several years now Illini Fighting Hunger has hosted the day of service and has successfully packed hundreds of thousands of meals. This year we will once again be joined by faculty, staff, and students with a new goal of 151,000 meals to honor each year the University has been open.

Important Details

  • When? Saturday, April 14th
  • Location? Memorial Stadium
  • Goal? 151,000 Meals
  • Estimated Attendance? 1,300 Volunteers

What You Can Do

This is our largest event of the year and we can’t wait to spend it with all of you. We hope to see you there!

Link


Last year more than 1,200 volunteers participated in meal packaging with Illini Fighting Hunger for the Community & Campus Day of Service. This year, members of the local community and University of Illinois faculty, staff, and students will join forces once again to kick off National Volunteer Week 2015.

The Food Packaging Project will involve packaging 147,162 meals – one thousand for every year of public engagement since the University was chartered – for local foodbanks to be distributed to needy families in Champaign-Urbana. Hundreds of volunteers are needed for the food packaging project, and several volunteer shifts will be available during the day. Be sure to help us celebrate 147 years of public engagement in the afternoon at an after-party! Register to volunteer today here.

If you’d like to support the Community & Campus Day of Service, but you can’t be there on the day of the event (or even if you can!), we need financial support to cover the cost of the ingredients in the meal. Donate online here! Alternatively, you can send a check to the following address:

Illini Fighting Hunger
1203 W Green St
Urbana, IL 61801

Your donation is tax deductible.

Making a Difference: Package Rice with Illini Fighting Hunger

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The Wesley Evening Food Pantry serves hundreds of individuals in the Champaign-Urbana community who face food insecurity. Among the most needed items for the Pantry’s monthly distribution is long-grain white rice. To meet needs, especially during the summer months, the Wesley Evening Pantry requires approximately 2,000 lbs of long-grain white rice per month.

Since September, 2012, the Wesley Evening Food Pantry has been provided with sufficient rice through the effort of community supporters. The concept is simple: community groups purchase bulk rice and bags for re-packing and organize volunteers from their organization to repackage the rice into 1-lb and 3-lb packages for distribution at the Wesley Pantry.

Illini Fighting Hunger has facilitated this process since its founding in 2012. We provide the equipment and resources needed to make organizing a project simple for community groups, churches, youth groups, clubs and other organizations.

The Pantry has nearly run out of packaged rice during the month of June. This is an opportunity for your group or club to engage food insecurity in our community in a hands-on way and meet a very real need in our community.

It will take $800.00 to purchase 2,000 lbs of rice and bags, as well as 30 volunteers and approximately two hours to repackage one month’s rice needs for the pantry. However, there is no minimum event size requirement and we welcome projects of any size. We are happy to host you at the Wesley Foundation, or to take our equipment to your facility for a project. Please contact us if you are interested in discussing this possibility further.

Community-Campus Day of Service

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cdos200x200Today the Chancellor announced that on Saturday, April 20th, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will kick off National Volunteer Week with our inaugural Community-Campus Day of Service.

The goal of that day of service? Package 146,000 meals – one thousand for every year since the University was chartered – that will be donated to local food banks and distributed to the many needy families right here in Urbana-Champaign.

UPDATE: 81,044 meals were packed on the Day of Service. We’ll continue to hold events to finish off the goal over the next few months.

Illini Fighting Hunger is one of the sponsors of the Day of Service and is facilitating the packaging event! We’ll keep you posted on the latest info and buzz up to the day of the event and beyond. In the meantime, get yourself signed up at http://go.illinois.edu/DayOfService2013.