CHAMPAIGN — Alison Dupre had food that needed to get to Champaign County schoolchildren in need.
Two Men and a Truck had wheels and a mission to help feed the hungry.
They got together, and seven years later, the Champaign moving company is still partnering with Feeding Our Kids to use its trucks and employees to regularly pick up food from Sam’s Club and get it to Feeding Our Kids’ packing center.
The food is distributed in take-home sacks to kids in need in 41 schools in Champaign County, so they have something to eat on the weekends, said Dupre, executive director of Feeding Our Kids.
Each school year, Two Men and a Truck transports more than 15,000 pounds of food that Feeding Our Kids buys through Sam’s Club with the help of donations, she said.
Travis Blaney, Two Men and a Truck’s business development manager in the region that includes Champaign County, said Feeding Our Kids was using volunteers with pickup trucks and vans for its food pickups when the organization reached out for help.
“We said, ‘We have trucks, we have people,’” he recalled.
One of Two Men and a Truck’s core values is giving back to the community, Blaney said.
The business also has a program in place called Movers for Meals in which its employees collect unwanted food items from customers on moving jobs and take them to the Eastern Illinois Foodbank to prevent waste.
“There’s so much food wasted on a move,” Blaney said.
This is a personal cause for him.
“I have a heart for it because I feel like it’s one of those things I don’t understand why in the United States we have so much hunger,” he said. “There’s a lot of food wasted.”
With the Thanksgiving holiday coming up, Blaney said, Two Men and a Truck has set a goal to collect 1,000 pounds of nonperishable food this month through its Movers for Meals program.
Want to help?
The business has a box at its location at 701 W. Bradley Ave., C, where food donations can be dropped off. Or call the office if you’d like to leave food on your doorstep for pickup when Two Men and a Truck has trucks out in your area, Blaney said.
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