WAYNE PA – The Outreach Center of the Pottstown Cluster of Religious Communities is among five named beneficiaries of the 13th annual “All Cans On Deck” drive for donated food, personal care, and pet food items to be distributed Thursday (July 16, 2009) at 12:30 p.m. from the warehouse of the Vanguard investment management companies.
Canned food is headed for the Pottstown Cluster.
Vanguard employees collected 485,000 donated items during recent weeks, and will load them onto trucks Thursday afternoon to be sent to the Cluster, as well as Philabundance, the Greater Philadelphia PA Food Bank; the Chester County Food Bank in West Chester PA, the Salvation Army in Upper Darby PA, and Community Action Development Commission of Montgomery County (CADCOM) in Norristown PA.
Distribution will be staged from Vanguard’s 400 Devon Park Dr. site.
The just-completed mid-year food drive was one of Vanguard’s most successful, with 722,746 food and personal-care items donated by employees across Vanguard’s three U.S. locations in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Arizona, a company press release said.
The tough economic climate made this year’s drive critical, according to Vanguard. Philabundance, the region’s largest hunger relief organization, has seen a near 25-percent increase in need for emergency food since last year, it said. Among reasons cited for the increase were rising unemployment and underemployment, higher food costs, increased mortgage,rent and fuel costs, and the “inadequacy of food stamp benefits.”
The “All Cans on Deck” program benefits food banks and agencies that assist children and families. These groups have an especially critical need for donations during the summer months when school-based nutrition programs are on hiatus, Vanguard said.
Vanguard is one of the world’s largest investment management companies and a leading provider of company-sponsored retirement plan services.
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