Colorado State University 2009 Cans Around the Oval Results Top Previous Year’s Total with 90,000 Pounds of Food

With demand rising at food banks this year, especially during the holidays, Colorado State University brought the community together in October to raise more than 90,000 pounds of non-perishable food and $27,000 in monetary donations during its 22nd annual Cans Around the Oval food drive.

The monetary donation will provide 108,000 meals; 90,000 pounds of food provides meals to another 2,250 individuals, organizers announced this week.

This year’s effort raised more than 6,000 pounds over last year’s total of 84,000 pounds of food.

“We are extremely pleased with the results because we had aimed for 10,000 participants and got 13,000, and we aimed for $25,000 and we finished with much more than that,” said Keith Colton, program coordinator for the Student Leadership, Involvement and Community Engagement or SLiCE office at Colorado State.

This year’s Cans Around the Oval was expanded for the first time to Denver, Castle Rock and Steamboat. Cans were collected at Hometown Huddle Watch Locations. The efforts added more than 300 pounds of food to local food banks. Donations were also collected at two home CSU football games which combined for 369 pounds of food and $160 in donations.

The Cans Around the Oval event on the CSU campus, which is Northern Colorado’s largest one-day food drive, involved more than 13,000 participants this year. The event continues to serve as a Colorado State tradition to raise awareness about hunger, tying together Colorado State students, faculty and staff with K-12 schools, community organizations and area businesses.

Cans Around the Oval is sponsored by SLiCE, which provides leadership development, service-learning and volunteer opportunities, and works collaboratively with students, staff, faculty and the community to offer a broad range of service and leadership opportunities for student involvement. Through the programs at SLiCE, students find support and resources to graduate as engaged, active participants in their local, national and global communities.

Donations benefit the Food Bank for Larimer County which annually distributes more than seven million pounds of food to 26,000-plus residents in the region. Residents include single-parent families, the working poor, senior citizens, youth-in-crisis, people with disabilities, the homeless and more. More than half of those served are children and elderly.

For more information, please visit http://www.slice.colostate.edu/cans-results.aspx.

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