On Saturday, July 31st Food For Friends volunteered for a Back to School Bash Drive Through event in Flossmoor, IL with You Matter 2 organization. This was a new partnership opportunity with a 7 year old organization started by a young lady when she was in high school, now a college graduate. Their mission is working with youth to make a better world. The Mission Statement is You Matter 2 provides youth with a safe space to develop positive relationships, leadership skills, and discover their passions. Our mission is to provide opportunities for youth to serve and make a difference in their community.
This event was expecting 300 families. Food For Friends planned to provide 1000 hot dogs, chips, cookies and water. The event was scheduled from 11am-2:30pm. The food arrived at 10am from our wonderful caterer, Lee N' Eddies. Karen was able to get there early to help set up the tent and assist the caterer with placing the food on the tables. There were a lot of lovely young ladies from YouMatter2 that were able to assist her with setting up the tent and get ready to. Once the other volunteers arrived we were able to start preparing the hot dogs and bagging the chips and cookies. When the event started promptly at 12pm, we were ready and waiting for our first car. We had a great assembly line going and the flow of the cars continued to come at a steady pace. A lot of the students were able to help us throughout the duration of the event which was good, so we had plenty of help. We were placed towards the end of the line so we had one person who was at the beginning of the car line taking orders of how many hot dogs each family wanted. Once they got to us we were able to grab the sticky note with their food order off the car and grab the bags which included the hot dogs, chips, cookies, condiments, and water. It was a seamless process and I was very grateful for everyone who was able to assist us.
All the families were so grateful and some people even inquired about how they can sign up to volunteer or find out more information about Food For Friends. Overall we served over 200 cars. This was a great event and I look forward to partnering with You Matter 2 in the future.
A big thank you to our sponsors and volunteers that keep our mission moving forward!
To learn more about YouMatter2 you can find them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or at youmatter2.org
For more pictures from this event, go to our album on Facebook titled 2021-07-31 Back to School Bash in Flossmoor.