Can It

Insurers World Philanthropy - Summer 2008

Hunger is a large problem which affects many people in both our own communities as well as worldwide. We decided to conduct an IW Employee food drive to make a difference and help out those in need. After researching some of the surrounding towns and cities we picked a food pantry in the City of Brockton which was having trouble keeping food on the shelves. The Charity Guild Food Pantry which is located at 501 Main Street in Brockton serves about 9,000 people in the greater Brockton area. The number of people in need has just about doubled from two years ago when they were serving only about 4,500 people, this proving the dire need for more donations.

Insurers World's internal food drive dubbed “Can it! Helping can hunger in our community” began on June 20, 2008 and set an initial goal of 575 items to be reached by August 29, 2008. Our company currently has 120 internal employees, and in order to reach our goal each person needed to bring in one item every other week. For 10 weeks, company employees pulled together and brought in items like pasta, peanut butter, cereal, canned tuna fish, vegetables and baby food. These donations were counted and tallied on a weekly basis, in order to monitor our intake in comparison to our goal.

Due to an excellent company effort, we surpassed our goal, and accumulated 580 items. The food items were packed up into shopping bags and on Thursday, September 4, 2008 we made our large drop off. Five Insurers World employees loaded up two cars and drove all the food items we acquired during the food drive over to the pantry. Upon arrival, we were greeted by the pantry’s director who very graciously accepted our donation. This food drive was a great way to give back to the community and Insurers World employees are gracious we could take part.