More than 20,000 Acts of Kindness Completed During Live United Summer Tour

The 2019 Live United Summer Tour has come to an end, and we are thrilled to announce our road trip results.

Together with more than 250 community volunteers, many corporate partners and individual donors, we have achieved our goal of 20,000 Acts of Kindness with a total of 22,776.

United Way staff members have spent the past three months popping up at community events with volunteer projects including back-to-school kits, healthy baby kits, reading buddies and more. You may have seen us at Kalamazoo Pride, Portage Summer Reading Kickoff, Voces Family Day, Lunchtime Live, Battle Creek Pride, or Family Yoga at BC Cargo. Thank you to those who stopped by to assemble a kit, ask about United Way or just say hello.

In addition to our tour stops, many of our corporate partners held diaper drives or book drives this summer. Each diaper, book and kit counted toward our goal of 20,000. These items have already begun to be distributed throughout Battle Creek and Kalamazoo, going to agencies that can get them into the hands of those who need them most.

The Live United Summer Tour was designed to provide support and bring awareness to two of our four community goals – improving the infant mortality rate, particularly among black babies, and improving graduation rates. These two goals are interconnected. The same factors that can compromise a baby’s health may also affect their ability to learn and succeed in school a few years later. The kits that our volunteers assembled were intended to address immediate needs in those areas while we continue our work bringing together partners and resources to find long-term solutions.

If you didn’t get a chance to participate or donate diapers, books or dollars to the Live United Summer Tour, don’t worry! There’s still plenty of need in our communities. You can help fill a short-term need by dropping off diapers, or new or gently used children’s books at either one of our United Way offices. If you’d like to be part of the long-term solution, consider making a financial gift to United Way.

Thank you to all who participated this summer, and thank you to our sponsors for this event: CSM Group of Companies, Pfizer, Landscape Forms, Kellogg Community Credit Union and W.K. Kellogg Foundation.