Inspired To Serve: El Paso Refinery Employees Fight Food Insecurity

• A nonprofit in El Paso, Texas, that provides special assistance to those experiencing homelessness recently hosted volunteers from Marathon Petroleum’s El Paso refinery.
• The employee volunteers packed 300 food bags at the Kelly Center for Hunger Relief, which distributes food to people in need five days a week.
• This effort was an outgrowth of monthly, drive-through food distributions on refinery property that employees support in coordination with the El Pasoans Fighting Hunger Food Bank.

Products Control Manager Greg Boyer describes fellow employees at Marathon Petroleum’s El Paso, Texas, refinery as “inspired” by the refinery’s long track record of giving, adding that volunteering is never about “checking a box.” Fittingly, a recent day of team building for his department included 20 employees packing roughly 300 bags of food at the Kelly Center for Hunger Relief.

“There’s a general desire to serve the community around us,” Boyer said. “You’ll never see somebody begrudgingly participating. What you’ll see, instead, are team members having friendly competitions to see who can do more.”

The Kelly Center distributes food in El Paso five days a week. The bags of food the employees prepared contained non-perishable food items to better accommodate the homeless population and other people in need who may not have access to adequate refrigeration and storage.

“The response from the volunteers was that they felt they made an impact,” said Boyer. “A lot of the feedback afterwards included questions like, ‘How can I help more?’”

This effort was an outgrowth of the refinery’s ongoing initiative to address food insecurity in El Paso. The site is in its third consecutive year of conducting monthly, drive-through food distributions on refinery property in coordination with the El Pasoans Fighting Hunger (EPFH) Food Bank. Employee volunteers unpack, sort and hand out food on the last Friday of every month, distributing approximately 450,000 pounds in 2022 alone. 

“Whether it’s department team building, our monthly food distributions or other community activities, it’s more than just a call to action. The positive attitude of employees is infectious, and the inspiration to serve builds on itself,” Boyer said.