Students from The Staley School of Leadership Studies at Kansas State University will be visiting homes throughout the Manhattan, Kansas, community to spread awareness about food insecurity and collect donations for the Flint Hills Breadbasket. For residents who want to donate, students will provide instructions and make requests at pre-visits Oct. 30-31, and canned goods or monetary donations will be collected Nov. 1-3. Checks can be written to the Flint Hills Breadbasket.
Food insecurity in Riley County is 17.5 percent and the poverty level in Manhattan, Kansas, is 25.4 percent.* These percentages are among the highest of all counties in Kansas. The Flint Hills Breadbasket’s mission, ‘To minimize hunger and poverty through the distribution of available food and to nurture projects that will help alleviate hunger and poverty,’ aims to help alleviate and reduce these numbers in the local community. More than 18,000 individuals received food from the Flint Hills Bread Basket in 2018. Learn more about the Flint Hills Breadbasket.
Items needed most at this time include:
- Condiments such as ketchup, mustard, barbecue sauce and salad dressings
- Pudding and Jell-O mixes
- Cake/muffin mixes
- Juice
- Crackers
- Granola bars
- Hamburger Helper
- Canned meat
- Macaroni and cheese dinners
- Ramen noodles
The Cats 4 Cans project is part of the LEAD 212: Introduction to Leadership Concepts coursework. Students are studying food insecurity and hunger, and actively applying leadership concepts in the local community as a service-learning project. Cats 4 Cans is an annual fall activity that has been active for almost 20 years. This activity fulfils the Staley School mission: Developing knowledgeable, ethical, caring, inclusive leaders for a diverse and changing world. Learn more about The Staley School.
“We appreciate the community support of our students as they go door to door around Manhattan,” said Tamara Bauer, instructor at The Staley School of Leadership Studies. “This kind of assignment allows our students to get real experience working with the community towards a common goal, and will give them the skills they need to solve problems in their careers and lives after K-State.”
For more information or for questions, contact Tamara Bauer at tamara@ksu.edu.
*Source: Feeding America and U.S. Census websites
