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At the Community Blood Center of the Ozarks, donors usually receive some benefits after giving: some food, lemonade, a t-shirt, or even an ice scraper. This holiday season, though, a donor can also receive the satisfaction of helping feed an Ozarks family. KSMU’s Adam Hammons has more on how the Community Blood Center of the Ozarks is teaming up with Ozarks Food Harvest, Southwest Missouri’s largest food bank.
CBCO and Ozarks Food Harvest announced their partnership this holiday season to help hungry families in the Ozarks. This will be their first year working with each other, and according to Chris Pilgrim, the marketing manager at CBCO, the partnership is a good fit.
“You know it just makes a lot of sense for not–for-profits in this economy to try get together and find new ways that they can help each other.”
Here’s how the new partnership will work: after donating, participants will have the option of taking home a t-shirt or an ice scraper. Through this program, a third option will be available where donors can opt to have the center give money to Ozarks Food Harvest from the money they would have paid for the other items.
For every person who picks this third option, Ozarks Food Harvest will be able to provide 12 meals for Ozarks families. Bart Brown, the president of Ozarks Food Harvest, talks about how they can provide that many meals from just the price of a t-shirt.
“For every dollar that is donated to Ozarks Food Harvest we can provide ten dollars worth of food because of the leveraging power we have with donated food.”
According to both men, a lot of people have said they would support the idea. Pilgrim explains the impact that this will have.
“When you think that around holiday time you can feed 12 people a meal, to me it’s a no brainer. I would say that if we have of our donors at our donor centers that choose this option, the contribution to Ozarks Food Harvest will be substantial.”
The CBCO staff members are also helping out by giving up their employee Christmas party this year, and donating that money to Ozarks Food Harvest.
The option to help feed the hungry while donating blood will only be for the donor centers in Springfield and Joplin, and will go from December 14th until January 3rd.
For KSMU News, I’m Adam Hammons.
