Recently, members of the Kansas City Chiefs helped kick off Souper Bowl Week of Caring by volunteering at Harvesters. For the first time, the Chiefs are a national sponsor of “Souper Bowl of Caring.” To show their excitement over this hunger relief program, various members of the Chiefs lent a helping hand sorting food including RB Jamaal Charles, OT Colin Brown, President Denny Thum, VP/COO Mark Donovan, KC Wolf, representatives of the Chiefs Women’s Organization and other Chiefs staff members. In all, this Chiefs contingent sorted 15,250 pounds of food, which equates to 11,731 meals provided for the community.

“Just to be here today was a lot of fun,” noted Charles. “When we got here there was a group of elementary school kids shorting food so I went around and thanked them. Then, I hopped into line and started sorting myself. The Souper Bowl of Caring isn’t just something that affects folks nationally, but right here in our neighborhood. That’s important.”

The Chiefs invite anyone interested in helping us sack hunger by supporting Souper Bowl Week of Caring in one of these simple ways:

• Making a contribution to the Chiefs and Harvesters Souper Bowl virtual food drive at: www.souperbowl.harvesters.org.

• Hosting a Souper Bowl food drive or asking guests to bring canned food to a Super Bowl party. For information on holding a food drive, contact fooddrive@harvesters.org via e-mail.

This hunger relief initiative transforms Super Bowl week into the nation’s largest youth-led week of giving and serving. This year, it is being held in advance of Super Bowl XLIV, which will be played on February 7, 2010. Since its inception two decades ago, the Souper Bowl of Caring has enabled schools, churches, and other community groups to raise over $60 million nationally. 100% of all donations go directly to food banks, soup kitchens, and other charities in our local market.

“The Chiefs involvement on this initiative has made such a mark,” said Karen Haren, President and CEO of Harvesters – The Community Food Network. “Without volunteer groups like this, we’d need to hire over 50 full-time positions. Having the Chiefs partner with us on the Souper Bowl of Caring has been a tremendous positive.”

Harvesters is the Kansas City area’s only food bank. Covering a 26-county area of northeastern Kansas and northwestern Missouri, Harvesters provides food and related household products to more than 550 not-for-profit agencies. This includes emergency food pantries, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, children’s homes, homes for the mentally disabled and shelters for battered persons. Agencies in Harvesters’ network provide food assistance to more than 60,000 different people each week. For more information, visit www.harvesters.org.