Let's CAN Hunger Challenge
Teaming Up to Feed the Hungry

Emmitsburg, MD - Mount St. Mary’s University teams up with the Campbell Soup Company in the fight to end hunger in the “Let’s Can Hunger Challenge”. The Mount St. Mary’s Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) and Hockey Team have organized a local food drive to collect and donate food to the Emmitsburg Food Bank and feed those who are hungry this Thanksgiving season.

“The Mount Hockey Club, as its service to the community, has been conducting two food drives each year, for Thanksgiving and during Lent, for thirteen years now,” says the Ice Hockey Coach Fr. Jim Donohue. “This year the Mount's School of Business' Dr. Karl Einolf and Dr. Sandra Sjoberg approached me about coordinating our efforts with the SIFE team.  It is a great partnership and teaming up together will help us to secure more food for the poor.”

The Mount St. Mary’s campus community plans to make a difference by giving to those who live each day with a little amount of food. The Food Drive will run from November 2nd to November 16th. Collection bins have been placed around campus to place non-perishable food items. Monetary donations will be accepted from November 9th to November 13th in Patriot Hall. 

Hunger is both a global and local issue. One of the biggest social issues facing American today is hunger.  There are 35,000,000 Americans who are food insecure. As well as 12.9% of individuals in Emmitsburg who are living below the poverty level.

SIFE has been encouraged by Campbell’s with the “Let’s Can Hunger Challenge!” The challenge focuses on three areas: urgent hunger relief with food drives, lasting hunger relief for more long-term sustainable projects to combat hunger, and hunger education and awareness initiatives.

The Campbell’s Soup Company will be attending the 2009 Symposium on Socially Responsible Investing, held on Monday, November 16th at 7pm in the Mount’s Knott Auditorium. The company will discuss challenges companies face to become and stay classified as being socially responsible. Campbell Soup Company’s mission is "Together we will build the world's most extraordinary food company by nourishing people's lives everywhere, every day." Campbell’s not only sell safe, high-quality products to its customers, but it also implies a responsibility to nourish those people who cannot afford to do so themselves.

Campbell’s is classified as being socially responsible because it is committed to fighting hunger, to creating healthy foods, and to environmental sustainability.

Last year Mount St. Mary’s collected just over 3,000 non-perishable food items. This year they hope to “Can Hunger,” with the challenge to collect even more than last year.

For more information please contact the Mount's Office of Communications at 301-447-5366 or Sandra Sjoberg at sjoberg@msmary.edu.