Three Minnesota Companies, One Big Heart, 100,000 Lifesaving Meals

COCONUT CREEK, Fla. (July 12, 2016) Three Minnesota-based companies recently came together in Florida to provide lifesaving meals for starving children through Food For The Poor, an international relief and development organization.

Feed My Starving Children, Payments For Change and Hormel Foods each supported Food For The Poor’s Join The Pack event June 4 in Boca Raton, Fla. Volunteers packed more than 100,000 meals that will feed nearly 300 children in Haiti every day for a year.

For these three companies, “giving back” isn’t just a slogan, it’s a core value and a way of doing business every day. In June, a team from the Hormel Foods’ Minneapolis sales office volunteered at Feed My Starving Children to celebrate Hormel’s 125th anniversary. Payments For Change donates half of its profits to charity.

The relationship between Food For The Poor and Feed My Starving Children, a Christian nonprofit organization based in Coon Rapids, Minn., goes back many years. Since 2009, that partnership has added up to almost 50 million meals a year.

“Food For The Poor is one of our largest and most effective partners in reaching the hungry. Working together we are able to feed more starving children, giving them hope for the future,” said Mark Crea, Executive Director/CEO, Feed My Starving Children.

Payments For Change, based in St. Louis Park, Minn., was Join The Pack’s presenting sponsor.

“We jumped at the opportunity to partner with Food For The Poor because their mission is near and dear to our hearts and we share the same values,” said Ashley Bruber, General Manager of Payments For Change.

“Giving back has been instilled in our family since day one. We have always been taught that life is about what you do for others and if you put God and serving others first, you will be forever blessed,” Bruber said.

Longtime Food For The Poor partner Hormel Foods, one of the nation’s largest manufacturers and marketers of consumer-branded meat and food products, also lent its financial support to Join The Pack.

Hormel Foods and Food For The Poor have previously worked together in family centers and orphanages in Guatemala to introduce a fortified, shelf-stable poultry spread called SPAMMY® to help address childhood malnutrition.

“Our company’s partnership with Food For The Poor is very special and unique because we share a common vision and purpose. We understand that poverty and hunger are complex social problems, and we are both passionately committed to making a real difference one child, family and community at a time,” said Daniel X. Hernandez, Senior Manager of Communications and Social Outreach at Hormel Foods.

“We feel very fortunate to be working with an outstanding organization whose integrity is absolute. Collectively, we have embraced the theme of ‘Si Se Puede,’ which translates to ‘the impossible is indeed possible,'” Hernandez said.

In addition to the Guatemala initiative, Hormel Foods worked with Food For The Poor and donated more than 100,000 cans of SPAMMY® to Haiti after the earthquake in January 2010. And as Ecuador continues to recover from an April earthquake, Hormel Foods also has provided essential food assistance through the charity.

“Generous partners such as Feed My Starving Children, Payments For Change and Hormel Foods make our work possible,” said Angel Aloma, Executive Director of Food For The Poor. “We are grateful for such caring organizations and companies because, through their support and donations, lives literally will be saved.”

Founded in 1987, Feed My Starving Children sends prepackaged meals specially formulated for malnourished children to more than 70 countries via partners around the world where they’re used to feed orphanages, schools, clinics and feeding programs.

Payments For Change is a division of Persolvent, a leading provider of payment solutions and award-winning technology. Payments For Change donates 50 percent of all profits to charity, providing food and water to those in need. Its mission is to help others while making life easier for companies through innovation and technology.

Hormel Foods Corporation, based in Austin, Minn., is a multinational manufacturer and marketer of consumer-branded food and meat products, many of which are among the best known and trusted in the food industry. Hormel Foods, which leverages its extensive expertise, innovation and high competencies in pork and turkey processing and marketing to bring branded, value-added products to the global marketplace, will celebrate its 125th anniversary in 2016. The company is a member of the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 Index, S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats, and was named one of “The 100 Best Corporate Citizens” by Corporate Responsibility Magazine for the eighth year in a row. Hormel Foods also received a perfect score on the 2016 Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index, was recognized on the 2016 Best for Vets Employers List by Military Times, and was named one of the 2016 Best Companies for Leaders by Chief Executive magazine. The company enjoys a strong reputation among consumers, retail grocers, foodservice and industrial customers for products highly regarded for quality, taste, nutrition, convenience and value. For more information, visit http://www.hormelfoods.com and http://2015csr.hormelfoods.com/.

Food For The Poor, one of the largest international relief and development organizations in the nation, does much more than feed millions of the hungry poor in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. This interdenominational Christian ministry provides emergency relief assistance, clean water, medicines, educational materials, homes, support for orphans and the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance, with more than 95 percent of all donations going directly to programs that help the poor. For more information, please visit www.FoodForThePoor.org.

Michael Turnbell

Public Relations
954-427-2222 x 6054
[email protected]