CenturyLink employees, communities raise 106,275 pounds of food and $271,900 in national food drive
CenturyLink Foundation supports employee efforts with $1 million gift
SEATTLE, WA – CenturyLink, Inc. (NYSE: CTL) employees and the company’s local communities collected 106,275 actual pounds of food and $271,900 in the 2012 CenturyLink Feed the Children Backpack Buddies Food Drive, which took place June 25-29 in approximately 650 company locations across the country.
To further support its employees’ efforts, the CenturyLink Clarke M. Williams Foundation contributed $1 million to the drive.
Food banks can purchase food at a lower cost per pound than the average person could at a store, estimated on average to be six pounds of food per dollar given. Based on this calculation, CenturyLink employees, community members and the Foundation donated more than 7.7 million pounds of food to food banks across the country.
Throughout the state on Washington, 313,665 pounds of food (including monetary donations, actual food items and the Foundation contribution) were collected to benefit the 26 organizations, including the Mt. Si Food Bank of North Bend, Issaquah Food Bank of Issaquah, Northwest Harvest and Food Lifeline.
“We appreciate our friends and neighbors who joined with our employees in this worthwhile endeavor to improve the quality of life in our communities,” said Sue Anderson, CenturyLink’s vice president and general manager for Puget Sound Region. “Together, we are working to help address the hunger issue faced by millions of people across the country as well as those here at home.”
According to the 2010 Hunger Study by Feeding America, the nation’s largest hunger relief organization, 37 million Americans, including 14 million children, are receiving food assistance annually, an increase of 46 percent since 2006. That means one in eight Americans now rely on Feeding America and its nationwide network of local food banks.
Thirty-six percent of the households that food banks serve have at least one person working, and more than one-third of client households report having to choose between food and other basic necessities such as rent, utilities and medical care.
