While most 16-year old high school juniors are worrying about getting their drivers license, maintaining their grades and keeping up with all of their extracurricular activities, Danny Loomans, of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin is thinking about all of these things, too. But he is also focusing his attention on something else – he is trying to break the World Record for “The Largest Food Drive in 24 hours in a Single Location”. The current record stands at 559,885 pounds of food! That’s a lot food for one teenager to raise – and not something he can do alone.
To reach his goal, Danny needs help – and a lot of it. A number of local organizations have joined the Food for Freedom campaign. One of the organizations Danny has turned to for support is YouGiveGoods. “YouGiveGoods is great. We’re hoping that the organizations who want to support us will set up their own online food drive to join our campaign and to make it easy for their community to be part of this great event. People can purchase food online to donate from anywhere and YouGiveGoods will deliver the food to our event site here in Fond du Lac so it will count towards the world record.” To help Danny and his team, visit YouGiveGoods.com/FoodforFreedom.
According to Mary Lonergan of YouGiveGoods, “YouGiveGoods is a great compliment to Danny’s efforts. Danny and his team are focusing their direct efforts to raise food in the Fond du Lac area. Our website gives Danny the ability to reach out beyond that area to all of the people and organizations that would like to support the cause but are not close enough to get the food there. We think there are people from around the country who would be interested in helping out, if there was an easy way for them to do it.”
There is already a drive set up to support Food for Freedom on the YouGiveGoods website to which anyone can donate food of their choice. YouGiveGoods will deliver all of the food donated online on the “big day” – Saturday, May 25th, 2013, in the 24 hour period during which food must arrive at the event to be counted towards the world record attempt.
And who will benefit from all this food? This massive food drive will positively impact the lives of the 82,000+ citizens currently living in poverty in Northeastern Wisconsin. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percent of children under the age of five in Wisconsin living in poverty increased from 13% in 2007 to 23% in 2010.
When asked what motivated Danny to want to try to beat this World Record he replied, "To provide people that don't have the luxuries we have with the food and nutrition they need. As far as the record goes, records are made to be broken...and I'd go to the ends of the earth to break this one.”
For more information about Food for Freedom, visit www.FoodforFreedom.org.