HSP’s Summer Intern Team Continues to Grow!

Erica

Throughout the summer, we’ve had the pleasure of introducing you all to our team of bright, young summer interns. We were lucky enough to welcome two more eager young people starting their internships today. Please, join us in welcoming these two, Erica Scodro and Katie Stanton, to HSP!

Erica, who is double majoring in Operations/ Supply Chain Management and International Business at Marquette University, is joining us a General Intern. In this position, she will be assisting the HSP staff in a number of different projects to help all of our programs aimed at providing relief to needy senior citizens and families to continue running smoothly. Erica said she was inspired to apply for the internship here because her parents have always stressed the importance of serving the community, and she is very interested in learning “the inner workings of non-profits.” When not studying or being involved service with the Big Brothers Big Sisters, Erica enjoys watching and playing sports, as well as reading. Her favorite books are mysteries, which stems from a life long love of Nancy Drew.

Katie

Also joining us for the first time today is Katie Stanton, a new addition to our Grant Writing Intern squad. Katie earned her degree in Writing and Publishing from Benedictine in December 2010, and is excited at the opportunity to cultivate these skills as a grant writer here at HSP. Service is a major passion of Katie’s, and she has spent a lot of time throughout her life volunteering for various food pantries, animal shelters, or with the homeless. When not volunteering, Katie loves to play piano, write recreationally and read. Her favorite book is the J.D. Salinger classic The Catcher in the Rye. We are very excited to have both Erica and Katie joining us at HSP!

Focus on feeding hungry children: Getting ahead of the game

It is hard to believe that less than just one week after our huge Feed the Kids (FTK) distribution day for June, we here at HSP are deep into preparations for the July distribution day! When this summer-specific program is added onto HSP’s already extensive list of year-round programs, it is never too soon to move onto the next project! With one hundred needy families participating in our FTK program, we are extremely fortunate to have such tremendous volunteers to help us prepare for all of the families who rely on our services.

One of the groups we were lucky enough to have lending a hand today was a group coming from the Outreach Community Center of Carol Stream. Today, this wonderful group of 9 young men accompanied by their leaders were not only successful in packing 50 of July’s ‘C’ FTK boxes, but they also assembled and labeled all 100 of the August ‘A’ boxes! If that were not enough, the group was also kind enough to help clean up the excess boxes throughout the warehouse, and lend a helping hand to the other volunteer group. There was a lot of energy being put to good use today!

Our second volunteer group of the day came to us from the First Presbyterian Church of Wheaton, with 10 children and 2 chaperones from their vacation bible school. Today, this group focused on completing 50 ‘C’ boxes for July, and they even brought in several bags filled with food donations! This VBS group along with the group from the Outreach Community Center completed all 100 of our ‘C’ boxes for July’s FTK distribution, and gave us a head start on August projects.                                                                                               

That being said, we are excited to have both of today’s volunteer groups back to help later on this week! Thank you so much to both the First Presbyterian Church of Wheaton VBS and the Outreach Community Center of Carol Stream. They both helped prepare HSP to feed 100 families in need!

In order to ensure that we at HSP are able to continue to serve the impoverished citizens of Kane and DuPage Counties, there are several food items that we have a particularly immediate need for. This is a great group project to work on, or a check made towards the purchase of one of these items would be wonderful. We are looking for:

·         Tuna (2,160 cans)

·         Peanut Butter and Jelly (375 jars each)

·         Canned fruit (1,875 cans)

·         Pasta and sauce (1,125 boxes/jars)

·         Main meals including boxed rice, boxed pasta dishes, canned chili, stew, and hearty soup

If you would like to donate any of these items to our FTK program, please call (630) 221-8340.

Thank You McGladrey!

This past Friday, McGladrey, the fifth largest U.S. provider of assurance, tax and consulting services donated 150 wrapped gifts ranging from board games and art kits to diary kits, Lego kits, and sticker books for needy children between the ages of 7 to 11 in our Children’s Birthday Project. 440 individuals pursuing their ongoing financial training attended a conference located in St. Charles this past month, and HSP was fortunate enough to be chosen as the charity group of interest for McGladrey support. 

This two hour charity event was made all the more enjoyable event as those in attendance wrapped the gifts to be donated while viewing the Cubs vs. Tigers game being projected on numerous screens and engaging in a vast array of carnival games.  The fun continued as the wrapped gifts were turned into friendly competition by assigning cutest wrapped gifts, neatest wrapped gifts, and various other superlatives.

We would like to thank McGladrey, whose donations to the Children’s Birthday Project will help create wonderful memories that last a lifetime for children living below the poverty line.  We currently have 534 children of this age group participating in the Children’s Birthday Project, and every gift that we receive truly makes a difference!  If you too are interested in making a difference in the lives of these children, check out our website for more information: https://www.humanitarianservice.org/, or call us at, (630)-221-8340.

Happy Birthday to our Assistant Director Kristin!

Here at the Humanitarian Service Project we are not only celebrating the birthdays of the children we help, but we also like to recognize the birthdays of our employees as well. Tomorrow, June 16^th, marks another special day in that it is our Assistant Director, Kristen Maxell’s birthday! Besides the usual busy day full of phone calls, tours of our warehouse and packaging of food at HSP, our employees and interns took time to celebrate and share the day with Kristin. Some of you may remember that Kristin has volunteered at HSP for a long time, but for the first time, she had the chance to celebrate with HSP not as a volunteer, but as a staff member.

(Kristin getting ready to make a wish and blow out her candles)
Kristin has been a part of the staff now for a little over five months and we couldn’t be happier. Her hard working ethics and vibrant personality assure that there is never a dull moment at the Humanitarian Service Project. Once again we’d like to thank Kristin for all of the hard work she puts in every single day. We all hope she enjoys her day and takes the time for herself to relax and celebrate outside of the office with her family and friends. She deserves it! Happy birthday Kristin!

St Petronille and Christ the King Church Youth “Live Out Loud”

With yesterday’s Feed the Kids distribution to the 100 needy families in the project so successful, everyone at HSP was motivated to get the ball rolling for next month’s distribution day. Luckily, we had some help to make this a reality. Today we were blessed to have a number of phenomenal youth volunteers from St. Petronille Parish in Glen Ellyn, and Christ the King Church in Lombard volunteering their time today in our warehouse helping us get a leg up on preparing for next month’s Feed the Kids Distribution.

These lively youth worked in our warehouse as part of their “Living Out Loud Service Blitz,” an annual event designed to get 6th and 7th grade youth involved in service around the community. Let us tell you, these young volunteers and their chaperones certainly did “get involved.” The various groups from the two churches throughout the day, fully created the 100 “box A” boxes of non-perishable food, literally constructed and filled the 100 “box B” boxes, as well as sorted bags 150 bags of various frozen meats. Everything that the “Living out Loud” volunteers accomplished today will help HSP reach the 100 needy families in our Feed the Kids Project with the nutritious food they so desperately need for the remainder of the summer. We wish to thank them for all their hard work. If you’d like to follow the lead of these youth volunteers from St. Petronille and Christ the King Church, and help HSP make a real difference in the lives of the needy families we serve, please call us at 630-221-8340.

Thank You for Helping us “Feed the Kids!”

Even as this is being written, our June Distribution Day for our Feed the Kids Project is going on in our warehouse. Throughout today, all 100 of the needy families served by the program will be arriving at our center to pick up much needed groceries including fresh produce, bread, frozen meats, and non-perishable food, totaling over 175 pounds for each family. As you may imagine, we’ve had a lot of volunteer help who have graciously lent a hand to help make our event to feed these needy families successful. We want to take this time to recognize them.

First we would like to thank 23 volunteers from the Illinois Colleagues group of Charter One Bank who volunteered in two shifts to help us load up the cars of the needy families today. These volunteers came from all around the area from numerous Charter One locations, and various departments within the bank to help us with the event.

Secondly, we would also like to thank the volunteers who helped us sort food to prepare to make the distribution run smoothly. Yesterday, we had a group of six students from Downers Grove South High School take time out of their summer vacation to help us sort the fresh fruits and vegetables we ordered from Caputo’s and the Pepperidge Farm bread. We want to thank these helpful young people for coming out to help us provide for these families suffering under poverty.

We would also like to thank seven volunteers from WOW! Internet and Cable in Naperville, for taking the time to come and sort non-perishable food, in our warehouse today. With cheerful and hard working attitudes, these fantastic volunteers really helped us get a leg up on sorting food for our upcoming distribution days for the next two months. 

Last but not least we want to recognize all of the other friends of the HSP who helped our distribution to these very needy families be successful; Pamela Myers, Karen Cummings, and John Cummings for helping with the distribution, Steve Stasiak for helping us load and being a back up delivery driver for families who couldn’t make it, and Judi Simon for helping the group from WOW! Get comfortable in our warehouse. It is only through the loving support of friends like these that HSP is able to make the impact in the lives of the needy families and senior citizens we serve.

With subsidized food programs through schools inactive during the summer months, the needy families in our Feed the Kids Project have are annually left with a means to provide their children with the food they need during the summer months. The Feed the Kids Program is designed to fill this void, providing each needy family with an estimated 525 pounds of food for the summer. If you, like these volunteers, would be interested in helping us reach these families with the nutritious food they so desperately need, please call us at 630-221-8340 to join us for our July and August distributions.

New Books From 13-year old Birthday Girl

    Birthdays are always a special occasion for children, especially when it is the day that marks the first of their teenage years. For Emily Friedman, turning thirteen not only marked her first sign as a teen but also her celebration of becoming a woman, her bat mitzvah. With this monumental stepping stone in her life, Emily wanted to give back to her community during her first days as a young adult. Emily decided that instead of receiving gifts, she will help raise money to purchase books for the children of HSP. With the help of her two younger sisters, Emily was able to host a bake sale to all of her friends and family to raise the money.

Emily (far right) and her two younger sisters

     Emily was kind enough to purchase two boxes of books from the Scholastic Warehouse and donate them to our Children Birthday Project. This marks one of the lovely representations of what the people in Dupage and Kane counties do for our organization. If you would like more information of reaching to families in the Children Birthday Project or our other projects, visit our website http://humanitarianservice.org/ or give us a call at 630-221-8340.