Give Back to the Community by Volunteering Autumn is a time of gratitude and the perfect opportunity to give back to your community. Around Thanksgiving and Christmas, Freestore Foodbank hosts large holiday meal distributions and they could always use helping hands during the week at their Liberty Street Market. If you love animals, especially cats, Ohio Alleycat Resource (OAR) is always in need of fosters, as well as volunteers to come in and clean up after their feline overlords (and provide those overlords with some snuggles as well). Cincinnati Animal CARE also always needs fosters and volunteers, and you can even just take a shelter dog out for a fun adventure for a day. If you want to help kids, ProKids can train you to be a volunteer advocate for abused and neglected children, or you could spend some time tutoring with Queen City Book Bank. Volunteermatch.org can help connect you with volunteer opportunities this fall, but consider extending your time and energy to these worthy Greater Cincinnati organizations year-round too. Photo: facebook.com/FreestoreFoodbank

The Freestore Foodbank is “the largest emergency food and services provider to children and families in Greater Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky and Southeast Indiana.” Photo: facebook.com/FreestoreFoodbank

A national beef donation contest wasn’t the cash cow that a local foodbank had hoped it would be, but they still walked away with something.

The Freestore Foodbank in Cincinnati barely missed winning $15,000 worth of beef in a recent contest from JBS Holdings, an American food processing company. In the Beefitarian City Showdown, the Freestore went toe-to-toe with four other community food resources throughout the country, but lost to the Hope for Hunger Foodbank in Phoenix, a July press release says.

During the contest, beef fans voted May 28-June 18 for the foodbank that they felt deserved the meat, which would be used to create meals for lower-income people within a given region. The $15,000 prize was equal to 5,769 pounds of lean ground beef, the release says.

Despite losing to Phoenix, the Freestore still earned $1,000 for its mission.

Freestore bills itself as “the largest emergency food and services provider to children and families in Greater Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky and Southeast Indiana.” It is one of 200 food providers within the Feeding America network.

Learn more about the Freestore Foodbank and its programs.

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This article appears in Jul 21 – Aug 4, 2021.