Walmart Donates Eggs and More to Hunger Relief

Campus Kitchen at Washington and Lee volunteers set to work sorting through them, and salvaged more than half.

The Campus Kitchen volunteers then saved what they could for a healthy egg salad – a staple of their meal service – and donated the rest to two local hunger relief organizations: the Rockbridge Area Relief Association and Glasgow Natural Bridge Food Pantry.

“We reached 40,000 pounds of food recovered from Walmart on Thursday when we got the eggs donated,” says coordinator Jenny Sproul about the regular food pickups, twice a week, from the Lexington, VA Walmart. The Campus Kitchen began collecting food there in September 2009.

The milestone comes just over a month after Walmart pledged $2 billion to feeding hungry Americans in a national media announcement. The Walmart Foundation will expand its current hunger fight by: granting hunger relief organizations $250 million, mobilizing associates and customers, collaborating with corporations and the government, and facilitating more than 1.1 billion pounds of food donated from Sam’s Club and Walmart stores.

The Campus Kitchen at Washington and Lee, who works with Walmart through Feeding America and the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, will likely see more donated food from that expansion. The Campus Kitchen Project network recently benefited from the Walmart Foundation’s commitment of $300,000 to help open six new kitchens over the next two years.

But for now, Sproul says she is thankful that her community partners are never hurting for protein to help balance meals.

Says Mary Berger (Blue Ridge Area Food Bank) of the large egg donation, and the affect on the clients: “Eggs are a wonderful addition to the foods we dispense and I'm sure our clients are benefiting greatly because of this. To be able to supply our clients with one of nature's most perfect foods is a blessing.”