On April 6, several team members from Ruan’s Cedar Falls, IA, operation attended the 15th Annual Cedar Valley Nonprofit Awards luncheon. The event was hosted by the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) Nonprofit Leadership Alliance, a student-led campus organization on that helps students gain experience, skills, professionalism, and certification.
Ruan was nominated for the Robert Koob Award for Collaboration, named after the university’s former president who was a champion for collaboration. Ruan was one of nine companies to receive the award for the collaborative effort that contributed to the success of the Northeast Iowa Food Bank’s (NEIFB) Pack the Dome event at UNI earlier this year. Pack the Dome is NEIFB’s largest food packaging event, with more than 2,450 volunteers packing nearly 80,000 bags for the Backpack Program. This program serves 4,100 children at 159 different schools across northeast Iowa each month. Before school dismisses for the weekend, children receive assembled bags of kid-friendly meals and snacks that fit in their school bags.
When Ruan was contacted to help with the event, Dedicated Operations Manager Lucas Steele jumped in to coordinate our drivers and trucks at the event. Ruan transported cereal and soup to the dome to be packaged and then hauled 420 pallets of food bags back to the NEIFB after the event was finished. The event truly encompassed a community coming together for the common goal to provide children in need with a food package. Thank you to our drivers Terry Owens, Jeff Smith, and Kendall Renken for helping the Cedar Falls community!
Congratulations to our Cedar Falls team for their hard work, as well as the other recipients of the award. We look forward to participating in the Pack the Dome event next year!
(left to right) Kendall Renken, Sly Thomas, Lucas Steele, Terry Owens, Brenda Shelton, Jeff Smith, Nicole Mahowald.