ORU Students Win Award From Campbell’s Soup Exec
Oral Roberts University’s College of Business hosted Campbell’s Soup Global Vice President Tim Toll on Tuesday in honor of ORU Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) team’s “Let’s Can Hunger” campaign.
The ORU SIFE team was named overall winners of the Campbell’s Let’s Can Hunger Challenge in May. The ORU team donated a total of 158,910 pounds of nonperishable food items, the majority of which went to children in need in Japan. As part of their campaign, the ORU SIFE team also provided online training to help people learn their way out of poverty conditions.
The team had donated 137,700 pounds of nonperishable food items to feed 444 Japanese children for a year after the country suffered a major earthquake, and 13,210 pounds of nonperishable food items were distributed to Tulsa, Okla., and international charities such as Tulsa Day Center for the Homeless, John 3:16 Mission, The North Tulsa Dream Center, and African orphans.
Toll visited with the SIFE team and spoke to business students in class. At the end of class, he presented the first-place trophy to the ORU SIFE team.
“It’s very gratifying to receive national recognition for simply acting upon our founder’s mission,” said Steve Greene, dean of the ORU College of Business. “Our students acted upon what they have been taught to do for others. There is a pressing need to find sustainable answers for the world hunger problem.
“I applaud Campbell’s Soup for their initiative to involve SIFE students throughout the world in developing creative solutions for hunger. It was such a great experience to have a corporate executive on our campus to celebrate student success,” he added.
The Campbell’s Let’s Can Hunger Challenge, sponsored by Campbell Soup Co. for the past three years, is a comprehensive hunger challenge including: raising awareness, translating awareness to action in the form of urgent hunger relief and empowering those in need to defeat the cycle of hunger. The challenge is offered in three countries: Canada, Mexico and the United States. More than 200 teams participated worldwide; 235 teams from Canada, Mexico and the U.S.
According to Campbell’s Let’s Can Hunger Challenge website, SIFE teams who compete for the grand prize must reach a minimum of at least 25,000 pounds and/or dollars collected.
The ORU SIFE team is in its fifth year and is comprised of over 200 students from 15 different majors. SIFE is an international nonprofit organization active on more than 1,500 university campuses in 40 countries.
