information from QFC stores

The West Seattle QFC store is supporting Northwest farmers in the fight against hunger throughout June Dairy Month. The effort will benefit Food Lifeline at a time when the need is particularly critical for children who have less access to school breakfast and lunch programs and rely on summer meal programs and emergency food boxes to help fill the gaps.

More than half, about 250,000, of the children in Western Washington lose school access to free/reduced breakfast/lunch during the summer months, and less than 10 percent have access to summer meal programs.

Food donations may be made all month long at Fred Meyer and QFC stores in Washington and Oregon, including the West Seattle QFC, and cash donations can be made at Fred Meyer checkout registers and online at NWFarmersFightingHunger.org. A little does a lot: For every $10 donated, local food banks can distribute enough food to feed a family of four for three to five days.

Cash donations generated by the campaign will help provide more protein-rich, nutritious dairy foods, like milk, cheese and yogurt, for emergency food boxes.

“Partnering with Washington and Oregon dairy farmers in a combined effort to fight childhood hunger means a lot to our entire employee team,” said Jill Hamilton, store manager of the West Seattle QFC. “The annual Northwest Fighting Hunger program is one important step toward addressing this vital issue in the communities where we live and work.”

To inject some competition into the campaign, the directors of the Departments of Agriculture from Washington and Oregon will vie to see which state can generate the most food and cash donations. The first year, the state of Washington earned the “Director’s Trophy,” while last year, Oregon was the victor.

But the real winners were the thousands of people helped in 2014: Food banks in Washington and Oregon received cash and food equal to more than 85,000 pounds of donated food from the campaign -- more than six times the 14,251 pounds donated in 2013.