Business Volunteers Unlimited Maryland
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CitiFinancial Spearheads Food Drive for Hungry Marylanders
The weekend before Thanksgiving most Americans are contemplating stuffing turkeys. At CitiFinancial's headquarters in Baltimore a cadre of volunteers are stuffing canned goods and nonperishable items into Maryland Transit Authority (MTA) buses for Stuff A Bus, a food drive that benefits the Maryland Food Bank.
Stuff A Bus is a public private partnership which includes CitiFinancial, the MTA, WMIX-FM 106.5 and Giant Foods. The event occurred on Saturday, November 17 as a part of Citi's Global Community Day and it continued on Sunday, November 18. Global Community Day is an international volunteer event for Citi. This year more than 55,000 employees participated in a Citi sponsored volunteer activity. The 2007 Stuff A Bus marked CitiFinancial's fifth as corporate sponsor and it was the first year that Citi Smith Barney and CitiBank joined the event. More than 200 Citi volunteers participated at one of five Giant Food locations to help donors unload their food and to cram as much of it as possible into an MTA bus. Depending upon their packing skills volunteers can stuff a bus with 4,000 to 10,000 lbs. of food. This year's grand tally was 76,000 lbs an increase of 21,000 lbs. compared to last year and an amount that surpassed CitiFinancial's goal by 11,000 lbs. In addition to Stuff A Bus, CitiFinancial conducts a food drive during the month of November at all of its 2,500 branches located in the U.S. Canada and Puerto Rico. Thus far, with less than 20 states reporting, CitiFinancial's food drive exceeds 100,000 lbs. and it has engaged several thousand volunteers.