It’s time to fight hunger and be a part of something bigger… just by doing something that you already do! SHOP! It’s seriously *that* easy! With every specially marked item that you purchase between April 6, 2015 to May 3, 2015, you will be helping secure a meal on behalf of a local Feeding America food bank.

How does it work?

1. You buy Hunger participating item (ex. Cheerios) at Walmart between April 6 & May 3.

2. Participating item scans at the register and is logged as 1 item purchased during this event and helps secure a meal on behalf of a local Feeding America food bank donated by the supplier.

3. On May 4, Walmart will pull a sales report of total unit sales by store in all 50 states and provide the tally to 6 suppliers and Feeding America.

4. General Mills will write a check directly to Feeding America’s National Office for the dollar amount associated based on the Sales report , for example, if General Mills sells 1MM boxes of Cheerios at $0.10 per a box they’ll send $100K to Feeding America!

5. Feeding America takes $100K from General Mills and divvys the donation among 200 Feeding America Food Banks based on number of Cheerios sold by store (based on zip code). Each store is tied to a Food Bank.

6. Food Banks then use funds to “secure meals” (ie.Acquire food, pay for electricity, gas, transportation, operating costs)

So, like I said… all you have to do is shop, and buy the (Unilever, General Mills, ConAgra, Campbell’s, Kellogg’s, Kraft) products with specially marked labels, and Walmart and the participating companies will do the work!

You can see how many meals have been purchased in near real time if you head over to the Walmart.com Fight Hunger!

Working with the homeless has made me really see just how bad OUR area needs help feeding the hungry.. It’s almost incomprehensible to think about how bad the issue is nationwide. Being a part of this program, just by buying food that will feed my family, even if it’s a product that I wouldn’t normally purchase, knowing that it will help others in my local area, and across the country, is something so small, but it can help make a bigger impact.

There are other ways to help out as well:

Via Social Media: From April 6 to May 3, Walmart is asking participants to take 1 picture of 6 people who are committed to fight hunger, post it on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, and connect the public post to the hashtag #wesparkchange. Walmart will donate $10 to Feeding America for every public social media post on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter connected to the campaign hashtag #wesparkchange, up to $1.5 million. Walmart has made an initial $1.5 million donation to show its commitment to this campaign to get it started. With your help, we can reach a goal of donating $3 million to Feeding America and their member food banks. Participants are encouraged to help Walmart reach this goal by posting multiple pictures, tagging their friends and creating a 48 hour challenge to see which of their friends can post the most pictures.

Via Direct Store Donations:

Donate at Register

From April 6 to May 3, you can give monetary donations of $1, $2, or $5 to your local Feeding America Food Bank at the register of any participating Walmart.

THE FEEDING AMERICAⓇ MISSION

The mission of Feeding America is to feed America’s hungry through a nationwide network of member food banks and engage our country in the fight to end hunger. We do this by:

FEEDING THE HUNGRY: Obtaining nutritious food to feed more people more often
Feeding America has set a goal to source 3.6 billion meals annually by 2018–an increase of 1 billion meals over 2010. To accomplish this goal we are investing in the most cost efficient sources of healthy, in-demand food, including sourcing more fresh produce and increasing donations through retail stores.

STRENGTHENING THE SYSTEM: Efficiently distributing food to those who need it most
To increase our network’s reach, it is crucial that we build the capacity of our food banks and agencies while bolstering feeding programs that efficiently distribute more food to more people. Through an investment in infrastructure, we are able to quickly and efficiently get the food we source into the homes of hungry Americans.

LEADING THE NATION: Engaging our country in the fight against hunger
We can only end hunger when the American public is aware of the full extent of the problem and understands and recognizes the hidden face of hunger in America. By bringing the issue to the fore, we can engage the entire country and empower the public to join us in solving this crisis.