Campbell Soup Company's 2012 Annual Make a Difference Week

Make a Difference Week, Campbell's annual week of volunteer service, enlists more than 3,600 employees across 18 locations in the U.S. and Canada in 90 volunteer events. Campbell has been participating in National Make a Difference Day for more than 25 years and expanded it to a week six years ago when a record number of employees sought turn-key opportunities to volunteer during the work day. Since that time, participation in the service week has doubled each year with a record number of employees expected to participate in 2012.

Projects will be focused on Campbell's commitment to measurably improving the health of young people in our hometown communities. In Camden, NJ, Campbell's hometown and birthplace, 1,100 employees – more than three quarters of the employee population at this site - will be participating in activities such as gleaning excess produce for donation from NJ farms, sorting and boxing food at the Food Bank of South Jersey and Philabundance in Philadelphia, packing lunches for the homeless with the Cathedral Kitchen and teaching nutrition education with the Food Trust.

Through a partnership with Feeding America, employees at 18 sites throughout the U.S. and Canada are collecting and distributing more than 3,000 backpacks full of food to youth in need. Backpacks will include nutritious, easy to prepare meals, to sustain youth through the weekend. These youth receive free or reduced meals during the school week through the National School Lunch Program, but do not know where their next meal is coming from on the weekend.

Altogether, Campbell employee volunteer efforts during Make a Difference Week will result in more than 4,500 service hours and approximately $40,000 in grants to partner non-profits through the Campbell Soup Foundation's Dollars for Doers program.