Slice of Charity: ARAMARK Donates Cash for Every Pizza Sold in Philadelphia-Area Catholic High Schools

Catholic Relief Services
Thursday, 18 March 2004

On Friday, March 19, $.25 of every slice of pizza sold by ARAMARK at Philadelphia-area Catholic high schools will be donated to an international humanitarian relief and development agency.

With 22,500 students in 22 Catholic high schools in Philadelphia and Chester, Bucks, Delaware and Montgomery counties, the donation could be a boost to the efforts of Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and the Philadelphia Archdiocese to ease hunger at home and abroad. The donation will go specifically to CRS' Operation Rice Bowl, a Lenten program that helps raise money for projects overseas and in the United States that improve communities' access to, and development of, food.

Twenty-five percent of funds raised through Operation Rice Bowl support innovative programs that help alleviate poverty and hunger in local U.S. Catholic dioceses, such as food pantries and soup kitchens. The remaining seventy-five percent of the funds support hunger-alleviation projects in the countries and territories in which CRS works. Last year 284 parishes, schools, families and individuals in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia raised more than $265,000 through Operation Rice Bowl. About $70,000 went to the Archdiocese and $195,000 to CRS.

BACKGROUND: Operation Rice Bowl
Operation Rice Bowl, the official Lenten program of CRS, is a program for the home, classroom and parish that is intended to deepen participants' spiritual journey through the six weeks of Lent. Every year, nearly 10 million families, educators and individuals use Operation Rice Bowl as a guide to observe Lent through its traditional practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, while learning about the challenges and gifts of the poor around the world.

Now in its 29th year, Operation Rice Bowl has become part of Lent in millions of households in the United States. While the program enhances Lent's spiritual focus for participants, it also substantively supports CRS development projects. Since it began in 1975, Operation Rice Bowl has raised more than $130 million for projects that affect communities' ability to access food both around the world and in local communities in the United States.

For more information, or to contact Catholic Relief Services, see their website at: www.catholicrelief.org