The Inn of the Good Shepherd’s fifth annual Cereal Dom-INN-Os challenge has returned and is expanding this year.
The program aims to help topple hunger and to make a difference in the community, and used to only be for elementary schools, but has expanded to include youth groups, sports teams, daycares and workplaces.
The Cereal Dom-INN-Os Challenge is a unique food drive in which groups collect as many boxes of cereal as they can to help stock The Inn’s food bank.
Once collected, groups are encouraged to set up the cereal boxes like dominoes and watch them tumble.
"In the past, we've had elementary schools collect boxes of cereal throughout the month of May. Then at the end, they build a big domino course throughout their school, let those dominoes tumble, and then donate all the cereal to our food bank," said Inn Program Manager Adrienne McPhee. "This year, if you're a service group, a business, a church organization, a high school, a daycare, (you can participate) we really want to open this up to everybody, and we have also changed the timeline."
This year, participating groups will be able to determine how long to run their collection event. It all just needs to be tumbled by the end of May.
McPhee said part of the reason the challenge is being expanded and extended is due to a rise in need.
"Our donations are not performing as well as we wanted in our previous food drives, but we're serving 45 households every single day at the food bank, 800 to 900 children every single month. So the need is really increasing, and cereal is such an amazing staple item," said McPhee. "Everyone enjoys cereal, and you can also eat it as a snack, even if you don't have milk. So it's a really versatile item for our food bank."
Last year's challenge collected 2,700 boxes of cereal for the food bank, and this year's goal is to double that.
Groups can register on The Inn of the Good Shepherd's website.
