Pack the Capitol with Second Harvest Heartland and Keystone Community Services

Energized Second Harvest Heartland volunteers showed up at the state Capitol on the cloudy Friday morning of May 9 to parse out pallets of shelf-stable, culturally relevant food. They packed 545 boxes, which our event partner Keystone Community Services later distributed across Ramsey County through their mobile distribution program. The packing shift even wrapped up ahead of schedule, considering the additional packing help volunteers received from Representative Robert Bierman (DFL), Peter Fischer (DFL), Amanda Hemmingsen-Jaeger (DFL), and Wayne Johnson (R). 

Structured like a packing shift, “Pack the Capitol” showed state lawmakers the scale and importance of the work that food shelves and food banks do, especially at a time when 1 in 5 Minnesota families are food insecure. Over the course of last year's packing shifts like this one, diligent donors and volunteers allowed us to distribute the equivalent of 139,547,944 meals to food shelves across the state. However, with rising grocery prices and federal and state funding cuts to local food programs, the need for affordable food only continues to increase.  

“State funding is incredibly important at a time like this. We need our policymakers as well as the public just to understand the collaboration that is critical between food banks and food shelves, particularly in this time of high need,” said Sarah Moberg, interim CEO.  

Our hunger-relief advocates have sent more than 10,000 messages to their state lawmakers so far this year, and if you haven’t done so already, we encourage you to join this collective effort by signing up for our public policy updates and action alerts today.