1 in 5 children in Washington State struggles with hunger but United Way’s new Fuel Your Future campaign will remove the barriers preventing kids from accessing nutritious foods, right in their schools.

Seattle, Wash., September 18, 2015 – Some of the more than 12,000 volunteers participating in United Way of King County’s Day of Caring were surprised when Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson showed up to launch the organization’s new campaign to end childhood hunger.

Today nearly half of children attending public school in Washington state are from low‐income families, and the number is growing. Kids who have regular access to nutritious food experience fewer school absences,
are less likely to require discipline, and more likely to graduate high school on time. There are significant barriers to participation, including transportation, access, stigma and awareness.

United Way of King County’s Fuel your Future campaign is working with schools throughout South Seattle and South King County, where the need is greatest, to identify how each school can better provide meals to its students and remove the roadblocks for those kids to get healthy food where and when they need it.

“United Way of King County envisions a future where people have homes, students graduate and families are financially stable,” said CEO Jon Fine. “The Fuel Your Future campaign leverages federal funding to ease the financial burden on families and improve students’ likelihood to graduate. It’s fitting that we launched the campaign on our Day of Caring, where the people and companies invest not only their dollars, but also their time to build a strong community.”

Day of Caring, the largest mobilization of volunteers in the community, will benefit 270 agencies providing volunteer labor valued at $1.6 million dollars.

Employees from Microsoft will be all over the community, in Kent helping Northwest Harvest keep food on the table for low income families, providing intense software training at the Kindering Center in Bellevue and lending legal expertise to the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project to name just a few.

Volunteers from AT&T will be helping families of veterans rebuild their lives, stocking the Food Bank at Saint Mary’s, while teams from Nordstrom are prepping affordable housing units for struggling families to move into their new homes.

The Day of Caring is also serves as United Way of King County’s official kick‐off for the 2015 – 2016 fundraising campaign, in which the organization will be looking to raise $126.7.