GROWMARK Employees to Deliver Supplies to Safe Harbor Shelter on Monday, January 8th
In mid-December, GROWMARK employees kicked off a supplies drive to help support the new Midnight Café at the Salvation Army’s Safe Harbor shelter in Bloomington, Illinois. Hundreds of food and toiletry items were collected at GROWMARK’s corporate headquarters located in Bloomington, Illinois. Employees plan to deliver the supplies in two pickup trucks to the shelter on January 8th at 11:00 a.m. to Safe Harbor.
Sabrina Burkiewicz, GROWMARK’s external communications manager, worked with the shelter to generate a wish list of supplies for the Midnight Cafe that included self-serve food items for the café such as cereal, peanut butter, oatmeal, coffee as well as paper products, including paper towels and toilet paper, personal hygiene products, and toiletries. 106 pairs of new underwear were also purchased as a special request from the shelter citing difficulty in meeting this specific need.
“I started to try and count individual categories of toiletries, boxes of cereal, jars of peanut butter but soon realized it was way too much,” Burkiewicz said. “We’re going to load up a few GROWMARK pickup trucks and drive them to the shelter in a mini supplies convoy and help the staff unload it.”
Brad Drake, the chief financial officer for GROWMARK, whose family has been involved with supporting the efforts of Safe Harbor for many years, said he’s proud to work for an organization that demonstrates care for our community in such a tangible way.
“GROWMARK’s noble purpose is to feed and fuel the world. Our employees took that quite literally in showing their support of Safe Harbor this Holiday Season,” said Drake. “I personally love the simplicity of the mission of Safe Harbor. It’s an organization that uses all of its resources as efficiently as possible to meet the greatest needs of the community.”
Major Dan Leisher who leads the Salvation Army in Bloomington, along with his spouse, Major Laura Leisher, said they were excited that GROWMARK chose the Midnight Café to support with a supplies drive.
“We’re excited to partner with organizations in our community to help meet the needs of many of the area’s unhoused. It takes caring people like GROWMARK to serve some of the most vulnerable people in our region,” said Major Dan Leisher.
GROWMARK is an agricultural cooperative serving almost 400,000 customers across North America, providing agronomy, energy, facility engineering and construction, and logistics products and services, as well as grain marketing and risk management services. Headquartered in Bloomington, Illinois, GROWMARK owns the FS trademark, which is used by member cooperatives. More information is available at Growmark.com.