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Members of the WIU Volleyball team volunteered to help make the lunches for distribution to area kids through the Summer Weekend Lunch Program, which is coordinated through a group of churches, social service agencies and volunteers in the Macomb community.
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Member of the WIU football also team also volunteered a Friday to make lunches for the Summer Weekend Lunch Program.
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Members of the Sodexo staff, who provide University Dining Services at WIU, volunteered their time to make lunches. "So far, we have been able to help 56 kids. We are thrilled to have Western students and members of Sodexo's staff help us out with this weekend lunch program," said WIU alum Pete Tarantola, who helped coordinate the Summer Weekend Lunch Program. "Sodexo staff went one step further and donated food for the program, as well."
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WIU Student-Athletes, Sodexo Staff Volunteer to Help Summer Weekend Lunch Program

August 17, 2015

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MACOMB, IL — Western Illinois University student-athletes and members of the Sodexo staff recently helped out Macomb-area social service agencies with their Summer Weekend Lunch community program. According to Pete Tarantola, an alumnus of the WIU Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Administration graduate program, a group of churches, social service agencies and volunteers in the Macomb community have been providing two sack lunches every weekend this summer (one for Saturday, one for Sunday) to area children.

Tarantola, who is the director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Warren and McDonough Counties, said the program was started to help offset some of the social service-funding cuts in Illinois and is completely volunteer based.

On three different Fridays this summer, student athletes on WIU's football and volleyball teams, as well as Sodexo staff (who provide University Dining Services), volunteered to help make the lunches for distribution to the kids.

"So far, we have been able to help 56 kids. We are thrilled to have Western students and members of Sodexo's staff help us out with this weekend lunch program," Tarantola said. "Sodexo staff went one step further and donated food for the program, as well."

For more information, contact Tarantola at (309) 837-5437 or via email at ptarantola@bbbs-mv.org.

Posted By: Teresa Koltzenburg (WIUNews@wiu.edu)
Office of University Communications & Marketing