If you’re looking for a fun way to give back this holiday season, we invite you to join Movin’ 99.7’s Fernando and Greg as they broadcast live this Friday, from the Safeway on Hamilton Avenue. For a second year in a row, Fernando and Greg are partnering with Second Harvest Food Bank to end local hunger. The popular morning show duo will be on hand to collect canned foods from 6am-10am at the Safeway located on 1530 Hamilton Ave in San Jose. Safeway will also be offering $10 pre-packed bags with our most-needed foods to make giving easier.
Once you have donated, we encourage you to share your giving with family and friends on Facebook or Google+. Please tag yourself on Perky the Turkey’s photo. You can also like and share his photo to show others you care about giving the gift of food this holiday season!
Share your giving and tag Perky the Turkey on Facebook!
Join us for the Movin’ 99.7 Food Drive, bring a can or two and get some Movin’99.7 swag! We look forward to seeing you tomorrow!
The students at KIPP Heartwood Academy are our fourth Brocade and 49ers MVCs.
We are happy to announce KIPP Heartwood Academy as our 4thBrocade and 49ers Most Valuable Coordinators!
For the past few years, the middle school students at KIPP Heartwood Academy in San Jose have participated in several food drives. This year, the student run Youth in Action club voted to run a food drive to support Second Harvest Food Bank as one of their local initiatives. The food drive began with a Halloween for Hunger kickoff event, which is through the Free the Children network. The club encouraged students to trick-or-treat for canned goods, while spreading the word about hunger issues in their school and neighborhoods. Ms. Leslie Eichler, the Director of Outreach at the Academy, served as their advisor.
During the month of November, the Youth in Action club led a schoolwide competition. The students raced to collect the most food possible for their homeroom’s barrel. To add to the fun, the homerooms drew their team name from their teacher’s alma mater. As the month carried on, the competition gained momentum, even prompting one of our Second Harvest Food Bank drivers to phone in the latest scale totals to the students, so students would know how much food they had collected.
CAL, the winning homeroom in the food drive competition at KIPP Heartwood Academy
We were delighted to learn that the students at KIPP Heartwood Academy brought in 3,370 pounds of food! Ms. Riley’s 7th grade homeroom, the mighty CAL Bears, earned the grand prize: a free dress pass and a gift card for classroom supplies. In the words of Ms. Eichler, “Our students are very proud of their success, and excited to bring so much goodness to their community. Our school goal is to develop the character of our students along with their intelligence. KIPP’s motto is Work Hard, Be Nice. The students at KIPP Heartwood Academy were honored to pass along so much food to the community.”
Thank you again KIPP Heartwood Academy for your spirited efforts to provide holiday meals for so many families in our community. We greatly appreciate all your hard work and support!
For more information on how you can run a food drive like the KIPP Heartwood Academy students, please visit our Food and Fund Drive page.
Students at KIPP Heartwood Academy pose in the donation barrels they used for the food drive competition.
We are excited to announce Rich Clemente as our third Brocade and 49ers Most Valuable Coordinator!
Rich, the General Manager of Northern California for Insulectro, a supplier of printed circuit boards, led his team of salespeople to run a very successful food drive that collected more than 900 pounds of food for Second Harvest Food Bank! Rich’s drive was part of a company-wide competition, kicked off by Insulectro’s HR department and executed by their regional offices. Offices around the country competed to collect the most food for their local food bank, which provided great motivation for employees to increase donations. Even though Rich’s team did not win the competition, they won as the team who collected the most pounds of food per person.
Rich was proud to share that this was his first time serving as team captain for a food drive. He learned about the Food Bank through several friends who currently volunteer at our San Jose warehouse. As he explained, it was only a short time before he got really excited about the possibilities of bringing in large amounts of food donations with his team’s four barrels. To grow his company’s collection, Rich invited his friends and local businesses to participate. He worked with Syndee, the owner of Grill ‘Em restaurant in Campbell, to place a barrel at her restaurant. Syndee agreed to match everything her customers donated in the barrel. Rich also had a barrel at The Bank in Saratoga and another at a friend’s band performance at the Los Gatos Lodge. Rich shows how easy it can be to multiply your impact – just get everyone you know involved!
Thank you Rich for engaging your sales team and friends to provide meals for our neighbors in need this holiday season! We are grateful for the support!
Rich Clemente (left) and his colleague deliver their collected food to Second Harvest Food Bank.
Georgia Skyriotis is our 2nd Brocade and 49ers MVC
We are proud to announce Georgia Skyriotis as our second Brocade and 49ers Most Valuable Coordinator! Georgia, a Brownie Girl Scouts leader and mother of 4, worked with her daughter’s elementary school and 2nd grade Girl Scouts troop to put together a wonderful food drive that has benefited Second Harvest Food Bank.
According to Georgia, every year her troop gives back to the community by “adopting” a family. This year, the Girl Scouts troop voted upon a different plan, to adopt the surrounding community. Armed with two barrels and the Girl Scout’s pledge, “to help people at all times,” the troop brought in 192 pounds of food, approximately 147 meals. As Georgia explained, the girls really wanted to help others in the community this holiday season. She is already thinking about raising the bar for next year and aiming for an even higher food drive goal.
We greatly appreciate our partnership with Georgia and her troop’s commitment to helping families in need this holiday season! Thank you for all your efforts!
Right now, the Super Committee is racing against the November 23 deadline to draft legislation that would cut at least $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit. Meanwhile, the House and Senate Agriculture Committees are still working to finalize the details of their recommendations to the Super Committee, which we expect will include $4-5 billion in cuts to SNAP (also known as Food Stamps & CalFresh).
Final decisions are being made this week, and the stakes are high.
Also this week, the House and Senate will consider the final FY12 Agriculture Appropriations bill (H.R. 2112), which includes funding for TEFAP, CSFP, and WIC. Thanks to your advocacy efforts, funding for anti-hunger programs was protected in the final package, and we are urging Congress to pass H.R. 2112 (also known as the “Mini-bus” Appropriations). Votes could be as early as Thursday.
Our window to influence these two important measures is closing fast, and we need everyone to join a national call-in day to urge Congress to protect anti-hunger programs in the Super Committee and to pass the FY12 Agriculture Appropriations bill.
Call Today!
Your calls and emails are making a difference, but more pressure is needed if we hope to protect programs important to our mission. Here’s how you can participate in this important national call-in day.
Call Congress! Time is running out. We must strong constituent support for programs that feed the hungry. Dial 1-877-698-8228 to connect to your members of Congress. Just stay on the line after your first call and you’ll be connected to your next member of Congress.
Deliver this simple message:
I am a supporter/volunteer/client/donor of Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties, which serves your constituents. There are two important issues currently before Congress that will affect hungry people in our community, and I’m counting on your support. First, I ask that you weigh in with the Super Committee to urge them to reject any proposals to cut anti-hunger programs like SNAP, TEFAP, CSFP, or WIC as part of any deficit reduction agreement. Second, I urge you to vote YES on H.R. 2112, which contains the FY12 Agriculture Appropriations bill. My food bank can barely meet the need right now, and cutting anti-hunger programs will increase hunger in our community.
Share! Share the action alert and the Feeding America toll-free hotline, 1-877-698-8228. Help us mobilize the public across the country in support of hungry Americans!
We hope you will take a couple minutes to protect the programs that help keep Americans fed!
With the hustle and bustle of the holiday season upon us, we’ve extended our lobby and donation dock hours for November 2011-January 2012 to receive your generous donations, including foods that require refrigeration.
Help us make Thanksgiving memorable for local families by donating fresh or frozen turkeys! Please note that frozen turkeys must be received frozen, not thawed. Check out our homepage daily for updated progress toward reaching our 11,500 turkey goal.
For complete information on our special extended hours please see below:
Inspire others to give and tag Perky the Turkey on our Facebook page!
If you’ve already donated food or funds to provide Thanksgiving meals, share your giving with family and friends by tagging yourself in Perky the Turkey’s photo album on Facebook.
We appreciate all your kind support to help feed families in need during the holidays! Thank you!
Throughout this holiday season, we would like to highlight a few of our neighbors who are running food drives and supporting Second Harvest Food Bank’s mission to end local hunger. We are delighted to announce Hernan Diaz, Spanish teacher at Evergreen Valley High School, as our first Brocade and 49ers Most Valuable Coordinator.
Since September, Mr. Diaz has been running a food drive with his six Spanish classes. He explains, “We generally associate hunger as something that happens faraway. We don’t think of it as something that happens to our neighbors.” This is why Mr. Diaz continues to highlight the issue of local hunger and encourages his students to help out by bringing at least one can a month to class. With 172 students, Mr. Diaz is proud to share that 80% of his students regularly participate. Their goal is to fundraise $1000 by the end of December in addition to contributing as much as possible to the school-wide food drive goal of 10,000 lbs. of food. To date, Mr. Diaz’s classes have collected over 500 lbs. of food.
Mr. Diaz believes the need for food exists beyond the holidays, so he plans to continue the food drive indefinitely.
We would like to extend our sincere thanks for Mr. Diaz and his students. We appreciate all that you’re doing to support the Food Bank!
Mr. Diaz with one of his Spanish classes at Evergreen Valley High School
Dave spent part of his 2010 birthday at the dedication of Second Harvest's solar roof; a project that he helped make possible
Second Harvest Food Bank mourns the loss of one of our brightest stars. Perhaps most widely known as the Christmas light legend from Sunnyvale, Dave Severns created a holiday light tradition that will be remembered not only for its mastery of lights and music, but also for being one of the most unique efforts to feed hungry people that our community has ever seen. After battling pancreatic cancer for over a year, Dave passed away on October 20th, 2011. Sadly, we lost Dave’s mother, Helen Severns, on the same day. Both were long-time supporters of Second Harvest Food Bank. Although the holidays will not be as bright without Dave and the light display that showcased his genuine caring for community, we know that his spirit will continue to inspire people for years to come.
Dave was passionate about many things: his family (he is survived by wife Sharon, children Kyle and Kelsey and sister Nancy), sports (Giants and 49ers to watch, golf to play), Tesla vehicles, chocolate, renewable energy, Christmas lights and giving back to the community. Through his Christmas light show he managed to bring them all together to create a spectacle that left audiences in awe. By choreographing solar-powered lights that danced to music, encouraging (and matching!) donations to the food drive, adding Tesla ride fundraiser nights and creating special sports elements, Dave and his family became community champions. We’re sure there was chocolate involved, too.
According to Dave, “our Christmas display makes people happy. We create memories that last a lifetime. Then we get the double bonus of folks “donating back” with money that will go to feed those in need.”
Dave accepts his Million Pounds Club Award from Brocade CEO Mike Klayko
This past year, Dave’s efforts reached a Food Bank milestone. On March 14th, 2011, Dave was inducted into Second Harvest’s Million Pounds Club. Since adding the food and fundraising aspect in 2003, the Severns-Pease Christmas Display raised the equivalent of 1 million pounds of food. Typically, members in this club are large companies, such as Dave’s former employer, Applied Materials. This makes his achievement even more remarkable.
Supporting the community has been a Severns family tradition for decades. The late Robert Severns started the Severns Family Foundation, which Dave took charge of after the passing of his father. During Dave’s time as foundation president, the Severns Family Foundation was awarded by the Silicon Valley Association of Fundraising Professionals as the Outstanding Foundation Grant Maker of the Year for 2010. That year, the Severns Family Foundation also made an integral gift to Second Harvest Food Bank’s campaign to go solar. Through this investment, the Severns family is literally powering the Food Bank for decades to come.
Dave has changed the meaning of “Christmas lights” for all of us. Although we are deeply saddened by the loss of our Christmas light legend, we will also be reminded of his generosity, creativity and passion for helping others by each glowing bulb and sparkling Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.
“All of us at Second Harvest are so saddened by Dave’s death,” shared Kathy Jackson, Second Harvest CEO. “He was fearless, he was so funny and self deprecating, and he cared so very much about those who were less fortunate. Attending last year’s Christmas lights extravaganza and hearing Dave speak so movingly is something I will never forget. Although the Christmas lights have gone out, the light of Dave’s enduring spirit will inspire us for years to come. Thank you for sharing him with us. We will miss him.”
Dave, we thank you for being such an inspiration to our community.
Dave joined by wife Sharon, sister Nancy and Tami from Second Harvest at the dedication of the Food Bank's solar roof
Dave along with friends, family and neighbors gathered this June to volunteer in our San Jose warehouse
Second Harvest Food Bank has officially kicked off the Holiday Food and Fund Drive along with a winning team to help raise $11.3 million and 1.6 million pounds of food. Taking lead are Holiday Food and Fund Drive Co-Chairs Mike Klayko, CEO of Brocade, and Jed York, president and CEO of the San Francisco 49ers.
“Hunger is unacceptable in this community,” Klayko said. “I’m proud to team up with the San Francisco 49ers and serve as the co-chair of the 2011 Holiday Food and Fund Drive, and I encourage everyone to support Second Harvest Food Bank’s hunger-fighting efforts this season by running a food drive at your office, making a personal contribution or becoming a sponsor. Please join our team to end hunger in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.”
The food drive is critical because nothing else matters when you’re hungry – you can’t concentrate, you can’t learn, you can’t work, you can’t get through the day. Nutritious food is the cornerstone of a healthy, productive life.
Too many local families and individuals don’t get enough to eat. One out of every 10 of our neighbors will be receiving food from Second Harvest Food Bank this holiday season. The Food Bank currently feeds about 250,000 people in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties every month.
Mike Klayko, Jed York and Kathy Jackson were joined by 49ers Alumni Guy McIntyre (center) and Dennis Brown (right) to kick-off the Food Drive on October 19th
“Even in the heart of the Silicon Valley, which prides itself on collaboration and innovation, hunger has become a serious problem in our surrounding community,” York said. “People who never thought they would need help are now turning to Second Harvest Food Bank for assistance. We are fortunate to live in a community where people work together and help each other prosper, so it’s only fitting that our local corporations get involved and help those who are less fortunate. I strongly urge business leaders in our surrounding community to join me and take action to support Second Harvest Food Bank’s Holiday Food and Fund Drive.”
The number of people Second Harvest feeds each month has increased 48 percent since the start of the recession in 2007. The increased need for food is expected to continue as unemployment remains high and wages stay flat.
“Second Harvest Food Bank has managed to meet the rising need for food despite the growing challenges,” said Kathy Jackson, CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties. “We depend on the generous support of the community to make sure our neighbors have enough to eat. Every dollar donated to the Food Bank provides two meals. It is unacceptable that in a wealthy community like ours, 1 in 4 people are struggling to put food on the table.”
Corporations, organizations and individuals can give what matters by hosting a food drive or donating to Second Harvest Food Bank this holiday season. To get involved, visit www.shfb.org. You can also donate online or by calling 866. 234.3663.
Second Harvest Food Bank thanks and recognizes the generous contributions and creative efforts of all the 2011 Holiday Food & Fund Drive sponsors:
One year after revealing our solar panel-covered 1.4 acre rooftop we are excited not only by the reduced electric costs, but also by the significant milestone the installation represents in the world of renewable energy. Through generous donations from Cypress Semiconductor, SunPower and individual donors, Second Harvest Food Bank was able to install 1,176 solar panels worth $1.76 million atop our San Jose distribution center. Recently, PG&E informed us that we were their 50,000thnet energy metering customer in California!
Yesterday, PG&E visited our San Jose warehouse to volunteer and celebrate the accomplishment which coincides with Energy Awareness Month, held every October. David Rubin, PG&E’s Director of Customer Energy Solutions, presented our CEO Kathy Jackson with an award for our solar installation and a $10,000 check, to support our ongoing efforts to eliminate hunger in our communities. The PG&E grant will help us continue to provide our neighbors in need with nutritious foods such as the fresh vegetables and fruits that require large cooling units to stay fresh.
Electricity is a big deal at our 66,000 square foot facility, which houses a huge refrigerator for dairy and produce, freezer for turkey and chicken and relies on forklifts and other equipment to move over 45 million pounds of food each year. After the first 6 months of the completed installation, our electricity costs at the San Jose warehouse showed an 83% improvement. The 322kw SunPower solar panels have saved over $60,000 so far, which will allow Second Harvest to provide an additional 121,000 meals. In the next 25 years, the solar array is expected to save the Food Bank $3 million dollars, approximately 6 million meals!
Since we currently feed 1 in 10 people in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties, any additional savings allows us to supply more food to our 300+ partner agencies such as food panties, soup kitchens, senior centers and after-school programs. Also, we can further our programs like Brown Bag and Family Harvest and offer more meals to those who need it most.
We are delighted for the support from PG&E and proud of our collaboration with Sun Power and Cypress Semiconductor. Together, we are able to help even more of our neighbors have access to healthy foods and take one step closer to ending local hunger.
Since its inception in 1974, Second Harvest has become one of the largest food banks in the nation, providing food to an average of nearly one quarter of a million people each month. The Food Bank mobilizes individuals, companies, and community partners to connect people to the nutritious food they need. Nearly half of the food distributed is fresh produce. Second Harvest also plays a leading role in promoting federal nutrition programs and educating families on how to make healthier food choices.
Stay tuned here for the latest news — efforts to end local hunger, stories from the front lines, advocacy alerts, and promotions benefiting the Food Bank.
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