well the local food bank is encouraging people to take action during the month of September to Fight Hunger here from Eastern Illinois food bank or Sophie Becker and Mary Mitchell glad to have you both here in studio with us today thanks for having us yes okay Sophie let's start with you um September is a big month for the food bank tell us what's going on yeah every year in September the feeding America Network across the country we call in all of our communities to take actions big and small to have an impact on Hunger awareness that could be just educating people having conversations with people you know it could be volunteering donating so we have a lot of exciting things coming up to have an impact in our community okay let's talk about some of those exciting things you have some cool Partnerships that are helping really multiply that impact to kind of match your 40 Years of the Eastern Illinois food bank what are some of those exciting things yes and it's easy to remember 40th anniversary we've seen about a 40 increase in need so it's kind of a good way to remember how many of our neighbors are facing hunger right now and to help alleviate about our friends at Champaign asphalt company have pledged to match donations up to twenty thousand dollars through September 30th so their goal is to challenge the community to raise forty thousand dollars total in honor of the anniversary yeah absolutely definitely a good month to actually step in and take action and help out the food bank there's also really cool um kind of initiative going on we've got the orange on Mary tell me what's going on so uh we're asking community members to join us in celebrating hunger action month by participating in operation orange which is our annual all-day repack event and that's happening on September 14th so basically what that entails is that we're going to have five different shifts starting at 8 A.M in the morning going all the way until 7 PM so there's some flexibility for people who you know have the commitments during the day and basically you can just come and help us repack food and if you don't know what a repack is it's when we take bulk food items like big bags of potatoes or apples and then putting them into smaller containers for our partners agencies to then help send out into the community awesome now people do they need to sign up they do need to sign up and it's very easy to sign up all you have to do is go to our website and follow a link and just enter some basic information and then at the end of the day you get one of these bandanas and also a water bottle hey look at that the needs super is a really cool designated month for people to kind of get their foot in the door of supporting and giving back to the food bank but what's the need looking like so as I said the need is about 40 increased across the 18 counties we serve but what's cool is if you donate during September and you see that doubled impact of your gift every dollar you provide actually gives six meals to a neighbor in our community so you really are feeding Twice The Neighbors by donating this month that's awesome and it's cool because um how far you can make a dollar go is pretty impressive why would you encourage people to come out for maybe like operation orange and kind of get their foot in the door what can they expect when they come and join the fun so all the food that we are packing goes out into the community almost immediately usually by the weekend and I mean it's the easiest way to give back if you're looking for a way to help someone this is the easiest way you know I think food is probably the top priority for most people and if you don't have access to food it makes it very difficult to do anything else so this is the best way to help anybody in our community yeah and if people can't make it maybe for the volunteer day of operation orange giving this month is is a huge priority that's one way people can continually show up and give back and Shop support yeah and you can check out eifoodbank.org and all of our social media we'll have lots of fun stuff going on all month lots of ways to get involved awesome well we appreciate you both for joining us and filling Us in on the month of September a very big month for you guys best of luck we hope it's very successful if you are interested in getting involved this month at the Eastern Illinois food bank we'll connect you with how you can do just that over on our website after Today's Show and we do appreciate Carriage Crossing Senior Living For sponsoring our segment this afternoon