Catholic Charities Open Your Heart Summer Challenge

Catholic Charities is participating in the Open Your Heart to the Hungry and Homeless Summer Challenge grant, benefiting Catholic Charities Emergency Services Food Shelf, throughout the month of July.

In partnership with Hunger Solutions Minnesota, Open Your Heart’s Summer Challenge makes it possible for Minnesota food shelves to restock and distribute fresh and frozen foods during this difficult time of year.

Minnesota summers were made for trips to the cabin, boat rides on the lake, and farmers market outings, not food shelf visits. But that’s the reality for thousands of Minnesotans. Children are home from school and the family budget is tight. Catholic Charities Food Shelf helps provide nutritious fruits and vegetables to these families and they need your help this summer.

Open Your Heart to the Hungry and Homeless will proportionally match donations to Catholic Charities Food Shelf during the month of July, up to $4,000, to help end food insecurity in the St. Cloud area. The more funds raised in July towards Catholic Charities Food Shelf, the larger the matching grant from Open Your Heart to the Hungry and Homeless will be. Donations to Catholic Charities Food Shelf can be made online here.

“In a normal summer, we see an increase in child visits during the summer,” said Eric Vollen, Catholic Charities Emergency Services program manager. “When school is out for summer vacation, many children miss out on free school meals and families turn to us for support. This summer, more families are experiencing economic hardship due to inflation, soaring food and gas prices, and the impacts of expiring pandemic relief programs. For those reasons and more, we are seeing an increase of food-insecure people here in the St. Cloud area, and the summer challenge comes at a time when Catholic Charities Food Shelf needs help the most.”

Every day, Minnesotans make over 15,000 visits to food shelves statewide – that is more than ten visits to a food shelf every minute if food shelves were open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In 2022, Minnesotans made a record 5,505,100 visits to their food shelves statewide – up almost 2 million visits from the year prior. Children represented 35 percent of food shelf visits in Minnesota with a total of 1,934,205 visits, up 55 percent from 2021. Even before COVID-19, there was a record level of need across the state. In July 2022, Catholic Charities Food Shelf served 3,607 individuals across 1,201 households; 1,664 of those individuals were children.