Members and friends of the
Franklin Federated Church have been stacking the church altar high with hundreds of boxes of Cheerios - all to benefit the patients of The Grow Clinic at Boston Medical Center.
The effort is part of the
Mission: 1 project of the
United Church of Christ (UCC), one of the two progressive Christian denominations to which Franklin Federated belongs. Nationwide, members of the UCC are working to collect more than i million items of food for the hungry by November 11, 2011. The UCC is also writing thousands of letters to Congress related to issues of hunger and poverty, and raising money for hunger-related ministries in the US and in East Africa.
The Grow Clinic specializes in caring for children diagnosed with Failure to Thrive, and Cheerios are high in nutrition and they make great finger food for young children.
Franklin Federated has been collecting Cheerios for The Grow Clinic for years, encouraging members to place them in a shopping cart in the church's foyer whenever they can. This is the biggest effort yet, however, with the church attempting to collect 1,111 boxes for the Mission: 1 project between 11/1/11 and 11/11/11.