Jamie and Andrew Resnik continue to find unique ways to help Jewish Family Service! You may remember when the Resniks packed meal bags for the Weinberg Food Pantry with their young children. They recently made an even bigger impact, this time through Andrew’s company, Global Atlantic Financial Group.

Because of his family’s previous involvement with JFS, when Andrew learned that his company’s annual conference would be held in Denver, he contacted our Volunteer department to help plan a service project for conference attendees. Global Atlantic always includes a community service project to support a local nonprofit in the city the conference is held.

Our staff worked with conference planners to organize the project: assembling hearty bean soup meal bags to be distributed in our food pantry. On the last day of the conference, about 120 Global Atlantic employees were divided into three teams to represent the West, East, and Central divisions of the company. Donning different colored team t-shirts, they engaged in friendly competition to see which team could pack the most bags before the deadline.

The prize? The glory of saying they finished first. However, everyone was a winner knowing that together they assembled approximately 1,000 bags! When the soup is prepared from the ingredients in the bag, each one should feed about seven people, so they essentially donated 7,000 meals to the people who utilize the Weinberg Food Pantry.

Not only did the employees volunteer their time for this project, but the company paid for all the products, contributed money to purchase canned tomatoes to add to the bags, and donated the measuring cups and leftover ingredients.

Dawn Richard, JFS development director, did a short presentation about JFS so participants understood more about the agency their donation supported, and Family Safety Net director Shelly Hines was on site to answer questions during the project.

In a thank-you email to JFS staff, Jamie Resnik said, “On behalf of Andrew and me, I wanted to thank you for working with Global Atlantic to create such a meaningful giving project. From the wonderful speaker and touching slideshow to the details of how the project was executed, everything was flawless on our end.

I was there when the project was going on. Quite a few people told me directly that it made them feel really good to take part in a giving project that was going to help so many people in need. After making just a dozen or so meal packets with my kids, I was astounded at the number the group put together in only an hour. I hope the packets have made a difference for the pantry.”

Thank you so much to the Resniks for their continued support and to Global Atlantic Financial Group for selecting JFS for its giving project!

If you’d like to learn more about corporate volunteer opportunities, please contact Nancy Benyamin, director of Volunteer Services, at 720.248.4642.

Photos by Allée Photography