Lace up your shoes, Sacramento -- the 18th annual Run to Feed the Hungry is this week! Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services (SFBFS) encourages you to be part of Sacramento's Thanksgiving tradition. The 5K and 10K fun run and walk launches from Sacramento State, 6000 J St., on Thanksgiving morning. With 30,000 participants expected to be involved, you are guaranteed a morning of fun with family and friends. Every week up until then, we will interview a new Run to Feed the Hungry runner. We will ask a handful of different past and present runners the same questions. We have found that people are motivated by many different reasons to be involved in this incredible event. There is still

The River City Food Bank held its 8th Annual Empty Bowls fundraising dinner Monday at the Masonic Lodge in downtown Sacramento. Two luncheons are scheduled for today. The events raise awareness about hunger in the Sacramento area and serve as the River City Food Bank's most important fundraiser. The Food Bank building was destroyed in a fire last fall and their fundraising efforts are more urgent than before. More information about the Empty Bowls events is available in a previous Sacramento Press article.         Event Photography by Ron Nabity

Since stormy winter days have almost everyone thinking about soup, it's a good thing River City Food Bank's 8th annual fundraising event is just days away. As in previous years, Empty Bowls features some of the area’s finest restaurants serving up their best soups- all to raise awareness about hunger in the region. Everyone who attends Empty Bowls chooses from among 1,500 bowls, hand-crafted by Sacramento students and professional potters. The bowls represent people across the region who don’t have enough to eat. As many as one in seven people report that they don’t always have enough money to provide their families with food. After picking a bowl, attendees choose soup from one of these

A Wal-Mart Facebook campaign is helping to raise awareness of hunger in our communities while offering $1 million dollars to the fight. One in five Californians is food insecure and in the Sacramento area 17.7% of families (national average: 9.2%) cannot afford regular meals. Sacramento needs your help! Anyone with a Facebook can participate and support the fight against hunger by visiting the website and “liking” Sacramento. Wal-Mart will donate $1 million to the community with the most support and $100,000 each to the next five communities. The Sacramento area is currently in 7th place. The deadline is December 31, 2010, 4pm PST. Spread the word Once you've “Liked” Sacramento, there'

As part of its 2010 Holiday campaign focused on fighting hunger, Walmart launched a Facebook campaign that invites fans to select the communities that will receive $1.5 million in grants. By visiting the campaign website and "liking" a community via their Facebook account, people influence which communities will receive the funds. The community with the most "likes" will receive $1 million to fight hunger; the next 5 highest scoring communities will receive $100,000 each. Why is this news? Because Sacramento is in now in 6th place which earns a $100,000 grant! With less than 48 hours remaining in the race, Sacramento's social media influencers are campaigning to keep Sacramento in 6th pla

Project61 Update:   "Feast for the Forgotten" This Saturday, November 20 at 2:00pm under the 12th Street Bridge. Saturday is the annual "Feast for the Forgotten" Thanksgiving meal and gathering for those who meet up once a month under the 12th Street bridge. This monthly event is called Project61 and was started by local rapper and motivational speaker Minister RMB in the fall of 2004 with some friends.  RMB says, "Everybody wants to know they are valued and loved...regardless of their current situation or background.  People desperately need love.  Love with no agenda.  We have all experienced times of brokenness, failure, loneliness, betrayal, abandonment....and it was during those ti

Local organizations are coming forward to help River City Food Bank after a massive fire destroyed their building early on Thursday morning. Sutter Health is donating $30,000 and holding an employee food drive to help raise the 8,000 lbs of food lost in the fire. The food bank has also received a $5,000 donation from the Golden 1 Credit Union, seven PC computers from Western Health Advantage, and office furniture from Ruland’s Used Office Furnishings. The community has also responded with generous monetary donations. “This morning’s fire is a devastating loss for thousands of people in Sacramento who rely on River City Food Bank for nutritionally based emergency food,” said Eileen Thomas

It is not hard to find someone struggling during these tough economic times. Take, for instance, Devon Lee. He and his wife have two children, but both are unemployed. “We need food, clothing, resources,” said Lee. “Money is a big issue.” But some relief came to Lee in a big way. He was one of more than 3,000 families to receive food assistance from a distribution organized by Feed The Children, the international hunger relief organization. Feed The Children distributed eight semi tractor-trailers full of food items at Cal Expo on February 24. Salvation Army-Sacramento was a partner agency of Feed The Children and pre-identified the recipient families. The boxes are designed to help a f

As part of a “Bowl-a-Thon” event, art students at Vista Del Lago High School in Folsom today finished off the last of 200 bowls they donated to River City Food Bank for its upcoming Empty Bowls event. The fundraiser, slated for Monday, March 8, and Tuesday, March 9 at the Masonic Temple, 1123 J Street in Sacramento, aims to raise at least $80,000 to feed growing numbers of hungry adults and children in the greater Sacramento area. “We are deeply grateful for the energy and dedication of Marianne Dana’s art students, especially during this time of difficult budget cuts for public schools,” said Eileen Thomas, Executive Director of River City Food Bank (RCFB). “Many more people are turning

California State Employees in the Sacramento area together with Sacramento Emergency Foodlink (Foodlink), began collecting food in early November 2009 and continued through January 2010 for the annual Food Drive. This year, despite state furloughs and salary cuts for many state employees, there was a record amount of participation among California State Departments and Agencies with over 200 offices partaking in the Food Drive.  As a result, over 770,000 pounds of food were collected which is an increase from last’s year total of 758,000. “The Food Drive sponsored by California State Employees is one of our largest food drives of the year," says John Healey, President/CEO of Foodlink.  "Y

Sasha Abramsky, an accomplished author, teacher, and senior fellow at Demos think tank in New York City, posed a tough question yesterday at his book launch party for Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger and How to Fix It, hosted by the UC Center of Sacramento. "How do you feed people who are hungry in a country with an abundance of food?" The question is one he explores in Breadline USA. Abramsky's book documents the stories of several American families and their struggle with finances and food. During the late years of the Bush administration, Abramsky described an increase in attendance at breadlines, lines of people waiting to receive food from a charitable organizati