For more information, contact:
Cassandra Garrison, St. Vincent de Paul Portland Council 503-502-6033, cassandra @svdppdx.org
Pound For Pound Challenge to inspire Oregon residents to Eat Healthy—Be Active
PORTLAND, Ore. (January 6, 2010) – Join the Pound for Pound Challenge and help fight hunger in Oregon and southwest Washington.
NBC’s The Biggest Loser, General Mills, Subway, 24 Hour Fitness and Feeding America are partnering on the Pound For Pound Challenge, a program that encourages residents in Oregon and Americans across the country to lose weight nationally to help provide hunger relief locally
To join the Challenge, visit www.PFPChallenge.com or www.BiggestLoser.com and enter your weight loss goals. For every pound of weight participants pledge to lose, the Pound For Pound Challenge will donate 14 cents to Feeding America – enough to deliver one pound of groceries to a local food bank – up to a maximum donation of $800,000. Pledges will be accepted until June 30.
Each person who pledges can be matched with a local Feeding America food bank nearest their residence, and donations will be delivered to those food banks when the Challenge ends. In Oregon, St. Vincent de Paul and Oregon Food Bank are partners with Feeding America. Participants who want their pledge to benefit other areas of the country can indicate that when they make their pledges.
“Supporting the Pound for Pound Challenge is not all about losing weight, it’s about creating opportunities where it becomes easier to make healthy choices about what we eat and our levels of physical activity. We know that many low-income households across Oregon do not have access to healthy, nutritious foods. It’s becoming increasing difficult for our Council to meet the needs of our clients, especially when new clients arrive all the time,” said Sharon Hills, Executive Director of Saint Vincent De Paul, Portland Council. “This is especially sobering when you consider that our network is providing record-breaking amounts of food this past year—more than 1,872,747 pounds of food and emergency assistance for rent and utility of over $1,140,556 serving over 295,967 people over the last year.”
A recent report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that the rate of hunger in Oregon and the United States rose significantly last year. Oregon, ranks second in the nation in the percentage of people experiencing hunger. In total, more than 49 million Americans struggled to get enough to eat at some point in 2008, the highest total in 14 years.
In addition to pledging to lose weight, at www.PFPChallenge.com you can create a PFP Challenge team on Facebook, invite a friend to join the Challenge via e-mail and learn how you can volunteer at local food banks. To learn more and to join the Challenge, visit www.PFPChallenge.com.
The program is built around the success of The Biggest Loser, a reality show that challenges and encourages overweight contestants to shed pounds through diet and exercise.
St. Vincent de Paul Food Recovery Network coordinates the efforts of over 89 agencies as well as manage special works programs including coordinating emergency services, operating a prepared and perishable food recovery program, maintaining a food bank, providing emergency rent and utility assistance, and maintaining a support structure for information, referral, and linkage in assistance to the conference volunteers. Through the years our mission has remained the same: provide compassion and support to individuals in need, regardless of race, origin, religion or gender.http://www.svdppdx.org
About Feeding America
Feeding America provides low-income individuals and families with the fuel to survive and even thrive. As the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief charity, our network members supply food to more than 25 million Americans each year, including 9 million children and 3 million seniors. Serving the entire United States, more than 200 member food banks operate 63,000 agencies that address hunger in all of its forms. For more information on how you can fight hunger in your community and across the country, visit www.feedingamerica.org.
