ON NATIONAL CORPORATE PHILANTHROPY DAY
General Mills celebrated National Corporate Philanthropy Day by formally announcing plans for the General Mills African Women and Children's Hunger Project. General Mills has committed $5 million over the next three years to hunger projects focused in Malawi and Tanzania, Africa. The program is designed to help alleviate hunger and create a sustainable agriculture in Africa by educating, empowering and economically supporting women as farmers, food processors and providers.
The project is the next phase of a philanthropic/volunteer effort that began last year when many employees and their families reached out across the globe to help address hunger in Malawi by packing and sending one million meals to malnourished children at five schools in the country. The project provided food for 3,000 children.
During the week of National Corporate Philanthropy Day, General Mills announced program details and the nonprofit organizations the company will partner with to provide assistance focused on strategies to:
- Continue to feed school children in Malawi.
- Invest in sustainable food and agricultural techniques such as water irrigation systems, basic fertilizer, etc.
- Leverage General Mills' technical expertise to develop innovative solutions to agricultural and food processing challenges.
General Mills is also continuing its commitment in the U.S. The company recently began the sixth year of the General Mills Champions for Healthy Kids grants program, a national partnership of the General Mills Foundation, the American Dietetic Association Foundation and the President's Challenge. Since 2002, General Mills has invested nearly $11 million in overall youth nutrition and fitness programs that have served more than two million children across the U.S. The goal of the program is to encourage communities in the United States to improve the eating and physical activity patterns of young people, ages two to eighteen.
In addition, General Mills recently awarded $500,000 in grants to fifty nonprofits, schools, community groups and other organizations across the Twin Cities metro with programs designed to improve the lives of the region's growing number of people of color. The Celebrating Communities of Color grants program, now in its fourth year, has served more than 250,000 people in the metro area, most of whom are people of color.
The General Mills Foundation, celebrating more than fifty years of giving, is a champion for stronger communities. In fiscal 2007, General Mills awarded $82 million to communities across the country, representing more than five percent of company pretax profits that year. Of the total, the Foundation contributed more than $20 million in grants in the targeted areas of youth nutrition and fitness, social services, education, and arts and culture. |
