That’s the goal, at least, for Hoosier Hills Food Bank in its latest fundraising endeavor.
HHFB is participating in Walmart’s Fighting Hunger Together campaign to win some of the $3 million the corporation is giving to winners.
Of the 128 food banks participating in the competition, the top 50 food banks will each receive a $60,000 grant.
Julio Alonso, executive director and CEO of HHFB, said the grant money will go toward purchasing about 21,000 units of peanut butter, jelly and bread for distribution to partner agencies.
HHFB works with about 100 partner agencies in six Indiana counties, serving about 25,000 individuals a year, Alonso said.
During the application process for the competition, HHFB was tasked with creating a campaign of its own and, knowing the voting would be online, Alonso said they wanted to come up with something that would catch the voter’s eye.
Peanut butter and jelly it was.
“Putting that peanut butter together with jelly and creating a PBJ sandwich seemed to be a cute way to get people involved,” he said.
Not only would the campaign be cute, it would be productive if the food bank wins.
The award would provide for a year’s supply of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for one food pantry in each county.
Alonso said some of the agencies receiving this supply would include the Area 10 Agency on Aging, which serves Monroe and Owen counties, Mother’s Cupboard in Nashville, Ind., which serves three additional counties, and HHFB’s mobile food pantry, which serves an additional 500 households per month.
Additional supplies would be made available to other partner agencies on a first-come, first-serve basis, he said.
Peanut butter is a high-protein food that goes a long way, Alonso said, but it is not often donated.
“Because it’s kind of expensive, it’s not something that we can purchase very often,” he said. “It’s very rare that we can purchase that much peanut butter.”
Peanut butter is always on the list of donation requests during food drives, he said, but because of the price, most food drive participants stick to canned goods.
The competition began Sept. 15 and will run through Oct. 5. HHFB was ranked No. 27 with 1,268 votes as of Sept. 22.
The goal is to hold onto that ranking and hopefully improve it by the end of the competition, Alonso said.
“We’re doing well,” he said. “We just need people to continue to vote. We need to build up a bigger margin because there’s still two weeks to go.”
Anyone interested can visit walmart.com/fighthunger and connect via Facebook to vote for their favorite food bank.
Individuals may place a vote once every 24 hours through Oct. 5.
