The Overland Park Rotary Club held its annual food and supply giveaway at Kauffman Stadium this month, continuing a tradition the club has carried on every year since 2017. The event, designed to feed 400 families for two weeks, provided enough food for a family of four along with personal care items that will last each family six months. The value of the goods distributed exceeded $200,000.
The giveaway is part of Rotary Cares, a program the club launched in 2017. That same year, the club also started Rotary Reads, which provides new books to children from kindergarten through 12th grade. Both programs are sustained by donations of food and books from Feed the Children, a partnership that delivers an average of approximately $2 million in donations to the club each year.
Over the years, similar events have been held at the Arrowhead Stadium parking lot in partnership with the Chiefs Ambassadors, as well as with Kansas Raceway, HomefieldKC, and the Kansas City, Kansas School District. Altogether, these efforts have delivered approximately $4 million in value to families across the Kansas City metro area, supported by more than 1,000 volunteer hours from Overland Park Rotarians.
The club's commitment to the community also extended through the COVID-19 pandemic, when it supported Johnson County first responders, including police officers and firefighters, with food and water valued at more than $1 million. That effort reached every hospital in Johnson County as well as hospitals throughout the Kansas City area
