The Reach 13,000 Food Drive smashed previous years’ records by providing provided more than 15,000 canned goods and $600 in cash for the Staff Senate’s Helping Hands Committee.

Reach 13,000, organized by the Chancellor Leadership Corps (CLC), is the largest group service project at UALR. Students annually lead the campus community in collecting food items for an estimated 200,000 hungry children in Arkansas.

This year, the Arkansas Foodbank received 8,083 pounds of canned food from UALR, which makes 6,736 meals, according to CLC Coordinator Nick Steele. Last year, the canned goods that were collected weighed 5,908 pounds, he said.

Steele said one in three households experience hunger, but it only takes $1 to provide three meals.

And counting…

Although an Arkansas Foodbank truck collected canned goods from UALR on Tuesday, Nov. 25, Staff Senate Helping Hands committee members will continue to help by distributing non-perishable canned food to those in need during the holiday season.

On Wednesday, CLC student leaders will purchase additional food items using nearly $1,000 in cash donations, so the final count of canned foods will be determined on Thursday, Dec.4, according to Steele.

As usual, a friendly competition ensued between departments and organizations across campus to determine who could contribute the most canned goods, said Steele. The student organization and department that collected the most will receive a pizza party in December, hosted by the CLC.

“I want to thank everyone for their participation this year as it made for a fun competition between organizations and especially departments,” Steele said.

“We started the year with our huge kickoff, the Kickball Tournament, which required 10 canned goods to contribute to the annual Reach 13,000 food drive,” he said.

The CLC held other events, including a “Boys Will be Girls” pageant, a Halloween Corpse Ball and a Battle of Talents in which five nonperishable food items were required for admission.

Student organizations such as the UALR Chancellor Leadership Corps contributed a whopping 4,913 canned goods, and the UALR Leadership Institute, led by Harvell Howard and Amber Smith, also contributed a respectable 2,584 canned goods toward the cause.

The Office of Institutional Research, led by Sylvester Cartwright, contributed 1,972 canned goods and was declared department winner.

Organizations and departments contributing to the annual event include:

• CLC
• Leadership Institute
• National Student Speech Language Hearing Association
• Brothers Keeper/Ladies Who Launch
• Pi Kappa Alpha
• EIT Scholars
• Alpha Kappa Alpha
• Kappa Delta
• Chi Alpha
• Chi Omega
• Kappa Sigma
• MBSF
• Office of Institutional Research
• Testing Services
• IT Services
• TRiO programs
• Office of Student Housing Kickball Teams
• Department of Nursing
• Department of Educational Leadership
• UALR Staff Kickball Team
• Office of Academic Advising
• College of Business
• Office of Communications
• Ottenheimer Library
• Office of Transfer Student Services
• Nanotechnology Center
• Department of Speech Communication
• Department of Health, Human Performance, and Sport Management

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