Volunteers Needed for a Fun Weekend at the Last Fling

While summer may be nearing its end, there is still much fun to be had. One end of summer opportunity that is sure to both be a good time and allow you to help those in need is volunteering at the Last Fling. The Last Fling is an annual festival run by the Naperville Jaycees on Labor Day weekend which raises money for local charities. For everyone that represents HSP as a volunteer at the Last Fling, the Naperville Jaycees will donate money to support our Feed the Kids program.

Volunteers at the Last Fling can sign up for a number of different activities such as working at the beverage tent, the food tent, selling tickets, or many other activities. The Last Fling runs from August 29^th to September 1^st with volunteer time slots available either from 4pm to 11pm on Friday the 29th, or 9 am to 1 pm, 1pm to 6pm, and 5pm to 11pm on Saturday and Sunday (30^th and 31^st,) and 8am-1pm, 1pm-5pm, and 5pm-8pm on Monday the 1^st.  If you would like to join HSP for this fun end of summer event to help raise money to feed needy children and families, please contact HSP at 630-221-8340. You can learn more about the Last Fling at: http://www.lastfling.org/

Chesterbrook Academy Wraps up the Summer

Today at HSP we welcomed an amazing group of visitors from Chesterbrook Academy of Naperville. A group of 14 students and their two teachers came to HSP dropping off school supplies they collected for needy kids served by our School Supply Drive. The six older children of the group began by sorting school supplies that they donated to our drive. While that was going on, the eight younger children had begun wrapping Christmas gifts upstairs for our Christmas Offering. After the older children finished they joined the younger ones upstairs to wrap a whopping 98 gifts! It is so wonderful to see young people getting so enthusiastic about reaching out to those in poverty. From school supplies to presents around the tree; we at HSP thank our friends at Chesterbrook for everything they’ve done to help us serve the neediest members of our community!

Thank you again to all of the volunteers who contributed their time this summer because HSP could not have done it without you! If you would like to learn more about how to help the Humanitarian Service Project accomplish its mission, please call us at (630) 221-8340 or email at hsp@humanitarianservice.org.

Goodbye to some of the best summer interns ever!

This week will be a very hard week for HSP as we are saying goodbye to 4 interns in a

matter of 3 days. The First ones to go were Bailey and Laura, who enjoyed their last day working on Feed the Kids’ distribution day, yesterday. Bailey Hicks began working here at the end of May as a grant intern. She spent many an hour writing and researching grants to apply to, as well as helping out in other tasks like supervising volunteers. She also occasionally helped out Michelle, Senior Citizen Project Coordinator, with various tasks for the Senior Citizen Project. Bailey’s hard work and dedication have enabled HSP to find new opportunities to fund our programs to better support the needy seniors and families we serve. As the summer officially ends Bailey will head back to the University of Illinois- Champaign-Urbana where she is majoring in English.

Bailey and Laura

    Another University of Illinois student, Laura LoVetere started in late May; Laura was a community outreach intern here at HSP. She spent her time supporting the Children’s Birthday Project, Feed the Kids and performing outreach phone calls to our clients. Laura let her creative spirit shine as she designed our monthly newsletter, library displays and display boards in our HSP center. Laura will be returning to school to work on her double major, French and Communications, but will soon jet off to Paris for her spring semester.

Alex Graaff. began working at HSP in June as a community outreach intern. She worked on projects such as creating new display boards for our different programs; communicating with clients about upcoming events, supervising volunteer groups, as well as updating and inputting information into spreadsheets. In addition to all the work she completed, Alex had time to work on press releases and performing outreach calls to the community. In a few weeks Alex will head back to Loyola University in Chicago where she will begin her junior year and continue pursuing her major in journalism. 

Alex and Matt

Matt Kole joined the crew in mid June as a marketing intern. He has worked in the field of his passion, marketing by formulating and enacting an outreach campaign to educate numerous local communities about our programs at HSP. Matt has also had the pleasure of writing senior updates for the Senior Citizen Project; this entailed interviewing the seniors in our SCP program. Matt was also able to step away from his busy marketing schedule to help supervise different volunteering experiences and send packages of food out to needy families on Feed the Kids’ distribution days. Matt will begin his first semester as a senior business administration and marketing major, with a sociology minor, at Augustana College this fall.

All 4 interns will equally be missed! It would have been a hard summer without their creative minds working hard on supporting HSP’s important mission. Best of luck to all of you!

The Final Feed the Kids Distribution Day

Here at HSP, today brings about the last Distribution Day for our Feed the Kids program for the summer. The environment at our warehouse becomes extremely exciting all day as 100 families come to pick up their nutritious groceries that Feed the Kids provides. Each family will be receiving over 200 pounds of wholesome food that will sustain them throughout the summer as school is out and government free or subsidized meal programs are no longer available. The food these impoverished families receive includes an assortment of fruits and vegetables, a variety of frozen meats, Pepperidge Farm bread, and nonperishables.

            HSP cannot talk about the success of August’s Feed the Kids distribution without thanking all of the wonderful volunteers who helped make it all possible. We give a huge thank you to the DuPage Unitarian Universalist Church’s DUU-Gooders group, LaForce Inc., Young Men’s Service League, Joint Commission, and all of the individuals who came to support us today! Thanks to their help, we were able to successfully distribute food to the needy families who came to our warehouse.

            The end of today’s Distribution Day will signify the end of Feed the Kids 2014, which has been another successful summer of providing nutritious groceries to all of the enrolled families. Thank you again to all of the volunteers who contributed their time this summer because HSP could not have done it without you! If you would ever like to volunteer with or donate to the Humanitarian Service Project, please call us at (630) 221-8340 or email at hsp@humanitarianservice.org.

The Last Feed the Kids of 2014 is this Wednesday!

As summer has dwindled to a few short weeks so has HSP’s Feed the Kids’ food distribution project. Twice this summer Feed the Kids has successfully distributed 195 to 225 lbs of nutritious groceries to 100 needy families, leaving one last Feed the Kids’ distribution day, tomorrow Wednesday, August 6^th.

To help out our friends at UPS Supply Chain Solutions came to sort fresh produce and bread for 1 and a half hours today. These UPS volunteers regularly lend their hands in this way on our ‘produce sorting’ days for both Feed the Kids and Senior Citizen Project. Also joining us today were 17 volunteers from the National Charity League, who energetically helped bag non- perishables for the Senior Citizen Project.

As the day bustled on and volunteer group after volunteer group left HSP’s warehouse, the staff and interns of HSP had the pleasure of celebrating Alex’s birthday. Alex is HSP’s database administrator. He technically turned 29 on Saturday but we still treated him like he was 28 until the festivities commenced today at lunch. Happy Birthday Alex!

Mission Possible

            Today at HSP, we accomplished our goal of donating school supplies for the very first time to “Project Backpack” in Kane County. We sent one pallet of school supplies to “Project Backpack” and tomorrow we will send an additional six pallets to the DuPage Regional Office of Education’s Back to School fair for needy families.   

We are still collecting school supplies to donate to schools with a high percentage of needy children. If you would like to donate please call HSP at 630-221-8340.  

Farewell Nicole!

Today, all of us at HSP had to say goodbye to one of our amazing interns, Nicole. Nicole was a marketing intern who started here at HSP in June. She worked hard every day on creating and following through on marketing projects, whether it was making flyers, conducting outreach to local businesses, or contributing to our social media accounts. On top of these duties, Nicole interviewed seniors we serve and wrote “updates” on them, blogged, and created press releases. Nicole is a bundle of talent who was able to step up to the plate throughout her internship doing not only high quality work, but work that will make a difference in the lives of needy seniors, children, and families.

After the summer Nicole will be going back to Lewis University as a senior and finishing up her degree in public relations/advertising with a minor in marketing. From getting to know her through her time here, everyone at HSP knows that she will succeed in all she does. Nicole will be greatly missed when she leaves the HSP family. Her contributions have made a permanent impact to both HSP and those we help in the community. From everyone here at HSP, good luck in all you do, and take care!