T-shirts for volunteers unite hunger-relief team

Corporation rallies community for food-packing event

By Laurie Frees

Interview Featuring

Jodie Larsen

Oshkosh Corporation

Vice president of community engagement

Liz Wollenberg

Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin

Chief systems and strategy officer

Oshkosh Corporation found a creative way to inspire its employees and others to give back. The Wisconsin-based industrial technology company designs and manufactures some of the world’s toughest specialty and access equipment. It hosts an annual event called Feed the Body, Feed the Soul, which has a unique vibe. Hundreds of people package food for the local community while listening to live music and sporting colored T-shirts for volunteers. The event supports Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin, an independent nonprofit and the largest hunger relief organization in the state of Wisconsin. At a time when one in 10 people in Wisconsin opens in new window—and one in six children—face hunger, Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin provides resources for nearly 400 food pantries, meal programs and shelters.

Jodie Larsen, vice president of community engagement at Oshkosh Corporation opens in new window, and Liz Wollenberg, chief systems and strategy officer at Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin opens in new window, shared how volunteer shirts help unify hundreds of people from more than a dozen organizations working to prevent hunger.

Q: What is Feed the Body, Feed the Soul?

Larsen: It’s a 12-hour event where hundreds of volunteers come together to pack staple food items while enjoying live music. Last year, we welcomed over 1,000 volunteers from 14 sponsor businesses plus community members who wanted to get involved.

Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin procures white and brown rice that arrives in 2,000-pound bulk sacks, so volunteers divided and packaged rice into 3-pound bags to donate to local pantries. We also featured a performance from the NEW Dueling Pianos, which brought energy and excitement. People were working hard, singing and dancing. Every year it’s a lot of fun.

Wollenberg: This event helps get 200,000 pounds of food into the hands of our neighbors in need. That equates to about six months of these staple products that we provide. In eight years, it has provided more than 1 million meals. It is incredible.

And while the food is super important, the event also creates a great opportunity for advocacy and education. It is a massive platform to educate volunteers about how, by packing a bag of rice, they are making a difference in someone else’s day. It’s also a really cool model of how organizations can come together. We use it as an example when other corporations want to help. We have this as the gold standard.

Q: How did the event start?

Larsen: Back in 2017, our leadership wanted to find a way to engage employees, bring them together and make a difference in our community. We knew food insecurity was a challenge we could help with, and Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin was looking for volunteers. We also know music is a great way to bring people together. We paired the two concepts of staple food products feeding the body and music feeding the soul and named it Feed the Body, Feed the Soul.

Q: How did promotional T-shirts add to the experience?

Larsen: They helped bring everybody in. They brought unity. We put the business sponsors on the back of the shirts to give them more visibility.

We chose volunteer shirts that are a nice lime green, so when anyone looked out on the packing floor it was a sea of lime green. Then long after the event, I’d be working out at the gym or I’d be out somewhere in the community and I’d see one. It’s like, hey, that’s one of our past Feed the Body, Feed the Soul volunteer shirts!

Q: Were any other promotional products involved?

Larsen: We had baseball caps available because volunteers have to wear PPE (personal protective equipment) on the packing floor. They all wear an apron and a hairnet or hat. The last few years we’ve offered hats that volunteers can buy, and then we donated the proceeds to Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin.

Q: How does this event fit the mission of Oshkosh Corporation?

Larsen: We want to make a difference in people’s lives—not just our team members’, but our community members’ as well. One of the company’s core values is, “We are better together.” We know that with our partnership with Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin and the other companies that sponsor the event we all are better working together. If we build those relationships up, we build our community up.

Q: How has the community responded?

Larsen: It’s become something everybody wants to do now, which is really cool. When we open our signups to our company sponsors, the response is immediate. About 90% of our volunteer slots are filled within a day and a half. We have to make sure the companies can bring all the people they want to, so that’s a good problem to have. For the next event, we’re planning to increase the amount of food we plan to pack so we can accommodate more volunteers.

Volunteers drive Feed the Body, Feed the Soul.

See hundreds of helpers doing their part to support neighbors in need.

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