This year’s designated charity for the ARMA Chicago Chapter is the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Located in Chicago near I-55 (Stevenson Expressway) and Pulaski Road, this state-of-the-art warehouse and training facility supplies 650 Chicago-area soup kitchens, shelters, and pantries with over 66 million pounds of food every year. During the 2011-2012 fiscal year, ARMA Chicago will donate the proceeds of the 50/50 raffle that it holds at every membership meeting to the Greater Chicago Food Depository. A representative of the Food Depository may speak at ARMA Chicago’s holiday party on December 6. The chapter also plans to hold a volunteer event at the Greater Chicago Food Depository in 2012. Participants can expect to work on an assembly line packing food into family-size boxes for distribution to those in need. Volunteers at the Food Depository work in a very clean and new facility with a very comfortable volunteer reception area and ample off-street parking. Our volunteer event probably will be held on a Saturday morning. The non-for-profit Greater Chicago Food Depository usually has well over 100 volunteers at its Saturday morning sessions, so the ARMA delegation may find itself working alongside church groups and others who have chosen to volunteer that day.

Food that is donated to the Greater Chicago Food Depository comes from grocery stores and other retailers, restaurants, wholesalers, food manufacturers, the federal government, and others. The Food Depository also purchases food, especially to ensure a consistent supply of much-needed products such as peanut butter and pasta. More than 25 percent of the food distributed is fresh fruits and vegetables. The Greater Chicago Food Depository also provides dairy products and meat, for a total of 135,000 meals per day. Last year, over 578,000 pounds of the food it distributed came from local food drives held by churches, schools, and others. If you would like to hold a food drive, please visit the Food Depository’s website at http://www.chicagofoodbank.org or call 773-843-7291. Items needed most include whole-grain cereal, rice, pasta, pasta sauce, macaroni and cheese, peanut butter, jelly, beans, canned meat, stew, soup, canned vegetables, canned fruit, and shelf-stable milk.