SAN DIEGO (Press Release) — Jill Borg Spitzer, chief executive officer of Jewish Family Service, has sent the following message to be conveyed to readers to seek their help in fighting hunger:
December 1 marked the first night of Hanukkah. It also marked the first day of voting in a new month of the Pepsi Refresh Project. This Hanukkah, we can do something amazing in the fight against hunger. We need your help. We need your voice. And we need your vote.
All of us at Jewish Family Service want to thank you for supporting the Hand Up Youth Food Pantry in last month’s Pepsi Refresh campaign. If you voted yesterday, you might have noticed that we finished November in 19th place, just 17 spots shy of where we needed to be to win $250,000. Out of more than 1,100 competitors, we consider a 19th place finish quite an accomplishment, but we’re certain we can do better. So the disappointing news is that we fell just a bit short last month, but the good news is that our strong momentum carries us forward into December. If everyone who was voting at the end of the month continues to vote, we have a real chance at this. This really is doable, very doable.
We need your votes every day and, even more importantly, we need you to enlist the support of your friends, family, and colleagues. Anyone you know who wants to combat hunger in the community, anyone you contact who might have a moment to give back with a simple mouse click or text message, any of your children who spend time texting anyway, anyone looking for an easy way to repay some karmic debt. There are 31 days remaining this year and on each of those days you and your contacts can vote—you can make a statement to fight hunger.
Winning this competition in December is a very reachable aspiration and a worthy one. Providing food and support for thousands of hungry San Diegans, including the children of our military service men and women—surely that’s worth the time it takes to type a few digits.
With the Pepsi Refresh funds, Hand Up Youth Food Pantry will be able to:
- Purchase a refrigerated truck to distribute 3,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables each week.
- Serve 1,000 military families at monthly distributions on two military bases.
- Serve food to homeless and low-income families (5,000+ people annually).
- Train 30 teenagers in our service learning and leadership development program, building the future leaders of tomorrow.
To make your lives easy, we’ve scripted an email for you to forward to at least 10 of your closest friends, but we sure wouldn’t mind if you forwarded it to as many people as you can, including those hundreds of Facebook “friends.” And don’t forget to sign up for our daily email reminders (register here). Win or lose, we are giving away an Apple iPad at the end of the month.aa
| HOW TO VOTE |
| Send a text message to 73774, with 104167 in the body of the text Standard texting rates apply |
| Click here to vote on using the Pepsi Voting App |
| Click here to vote at Pepsi |
Thank you & Happy Hanukkah,
Jill Borg Spitzer, CEO
Jewish Family Service