Block Walk brings bounty of canned goods for Hoosier Hills

It took 16 field hockey players two and a half hours to collect 627 pounds of food, putting them in first place for the Hoosier Hills Food Bank’s Block Walk challenge.

The IU field hockey team was one of the seven student groups participating in the Block Walk on Monday. After spending the afternoon collecting items around the city, participants returned to Hoosier Hills Food Bank and “weighed in” to see how much they collected.

The participating teams collected almost 2,000 pounds of donated food by the closing ceremony.

“That kind of community spirit is what helped us distribute 2.5 million pounds of food last year,” said Julio Alonso, executive director of Hoosier Hills Food Bank, as he addressed the crowd during the closing ceremony. He said the volunteers’ work would benefit numerous Bloomington residents, including needy children and seniors.

Jennifer Jameson, Hoosier Hills Food Bank’s Advocate for Community Engagement, said the Block Walk had been held unsuccessfully once before. Because this year’s success laid the groundwork for putting the event together in future years, she estimated it would become an annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day tradition for the food bank.

“Doing something in MLK’s honor is refreshing and important,” Jameson said. “Hopefully it got participants thinking about his legacy and connecting to the broader Bloomington community.”

Delta Kappa Epsilon member Skyler Fulkerson was surprised by how generous people were with their donations. He said he found it easier than he expected to collect a lot in a small amount of time. Delta Kappa Epsilon came in second place, with 387 pounds of food.

The Block Walk was initially conceived for the IU Greek community, but it ended up expanding to include many other student organizations. Participating groups included the Volunteer Student Bureau, the IU Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology,
Alpha Gamma Delta, Delta Tau Delta, Alpha Phi Omega, Delta Kappa Epsilon and IU field hockey.

The field hockey team’s winning strategy was to split up into smaller teams and put their total together at the end of the day. The team won matching shirts, a picture on the Block Walk “Hall of Fame” and a trophy made of canned goods to display for the year.

Team captain Meg O’Connell said she thought the event was a lot of fun and a good team-building experience for her fellow players.

“It was a competition, and we’re always up for a challenge,” she said.

Jameson said she was definitely impressed by the event’s success, especially in its first year, and she thought adding an element of competition might have driven students to collect more.

“It was nice for them to have a competitive spirit,” she said, “but I hope they realize they are all IU students coming together to address the injustice of hunger in Bloomington.”