Featured
May 10th, 2012
It won’t be official until Walmart announces who will receive the $50,000 check on May 15, but anti-poverty advocates say they’re excited regardless of who will get it. “I’m hoping that they would consider our organization, but the bottom line is that we’re just happy that … someone somewhere is going to get this funding to fight hunger issues in Kings County,” said Jeff Garner, executive director of Kings Community Action Organization. Garner said KCAO was among organizations invited to apply for the funding. He doesn’t expect his organization to receive the whole lump sum. Most likely, the funding will be shared by a few organizations, he said.
Read more at the Hanford Sentinel
May 10th, 2012
Salem has won $50,000 to be used for hunger relief in a national campaign led by Walmart. The Facebook campaign, “Fighting Hunger Together,” invited residents of 200 communities nationwide to vote and earn the funds. The top community, Youngstown-Warren, Ohio, won $1 million. The next 20, including Salem, won $50,000 each. Salem was ranked 16 with 4,758 votes. Salem is the only town in the Northwest to be selected. Seven from the list are in California
Read more at the Statesman Journal
May 9th, 2012
The following is an op-ed by David Schatsky, principal of Green Research. The world’s largest companies hold the key to setting global commerce on an environmentally sustainable path. The top 500 companies in the world generate $23 trillion in annual revenue, more than a third of global GDP. If the world’s largest companies can achieve radical improvements in their environmental performance—slashing their negative impacts while finding new ways of thriving—the effect on our planet and our society will be profoundly positive. For years big buyers have used “supplier scorecards” to rate suppliers on a range of criteria. Increasingly, companies are using scorecards to assess and push for improvements in environmental performance. An early example is Walmart, which introduced a supplier packaging scorecard in 2006 with the goal of driving a modest reduction in the volume of packaging (5 percent over 5 years). In 2009, it announced a supplier sustainability assessment to expand the environmental performance measures on which it evaluated its suppliers. Procter & Gamble rolled out its own supplier sustainability score card in spring of 2010.
Read more at the Environmental Leader
May 9th, 2012
Ahead of the sustainability 24 leadership debate, Adam Werbach discusses climate change, CEOs and the future of sustainability. In a classic tale of poacher-turned-gamekeeper, Werbach, who once described Walmart as “a new breed of toxin … that could wreak havoc on a town” was eventually won over by the strategy established by former CEO Lee Scott in 2005. But when Act Now started to work with Walmart in 2006, the world’s largest private company, environmentalists responded with such vitriol that he would only speak in public with security protection. Werbach countered his critics by arguing that enormous companies like Walmart can make a huge impact with tiny changes.
Read more at the Guardian
May 8th, 2012
When something sounds too good to be true, you check it out. So Jeana Murphy and Henry Jordan did some sleuthing when their employer, Walmart, offered to pick up part of the tab for degrees from an online university that offers flexible hours, relatively cheap tuition and college credit for on-the-job training and experience. Murphy, a 30-year-old assistant manager at a Walmart store in Elkin, N.C., started by Googling the American Public University System, the for-profit institution that two years ago landed a highly sought partnership as the preferred educational provider for the more than 1.3 million U.S. employees of Walmart Stores, Inc. Her wariness was due in part to having been burned before, when she attended an unaccredited for-profit college and earned credits that later didn’t transfer to Wilkes Community College. At first glimpse APUS looked legit, however. And Murphy was impressed with course offerings from the university, which enrolls 110,000 students in online programs, about 64 percent of whom are active-duty members of the U.S. military.
Read more at Insider Higher Ed
May 8th, 2012
Trader Joe’s is most welcome to Boulder. After the closure of Albertson’s and Lever’s, King Sooper’s is the only affordable supermarket in Boulder with a wide range of choices from down to Earth, to fancy. But their monopoly of the less than affluent shoppers also means that prices keep inching up. What Boulder really needs is a Walmart, but since the rich are too opposed to that let us at least have more affordable supermarkets, however small, so that King Sooper’s does not have a monopoly on the wallets of the middle income and poor.
Read more at the Daily Camera
May 7th, 2012
Sioux Falls has seen its share of “not in my neighborhood” campaigns over the years. Folks have tried to stop retail stores such as Ace Hardware at 41st and Sertoma, Walgreens at 26th and Minnesota, and even the eastside Walmart. Residents have opposed a memory care unit, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, adult entertainment businesses and an expansion of a car dealership. Sometimes efforts have successfully stopped projects. Often, they have encouraged frank discussions. But almost always, opposition has been based on fear of the unknown or stereotypes about people who would frequent the area.
Read more at the Argus Leader
May 7th, 2012
St. George did not win Walmart’s $1 million grant to fight hunger, but that doesn’t mean it’s not getting anything. The city, along with the 19 other runners-up in the Facebook challenge, will receive $50,000 from Walmart’s “Fight Hunger Together” campaign. The $50,000 will go directly toward supporting local families through food banks and area pantries. “Hunger is a defining issue for America as millions struggle to put food on the table every day,” said Jack Sinclair, executive vice president of Walmart’s U.S. grocery business. “Helping fight hunger is something our associates, customers and supplier partners believe in and together we can help make a positive impact on this issue.”
Read more at KSL.com
May 7th, 2012
Take a bow, Southern Utah. You came together and cast enough votes via Facebook and helped St. George take one of the top spots in Walmart’s “Fighting Hunger Together” campaign.
With more than 13,000 votes, the city won a $50,000 grant from the retailer to fight hunger. Almost 400,000 total votes wee cast, with 20 communities each receiving $50,000.
The program is a generous one from what has become the nation’s largest grocer. Walmart has donated more than $122 million to hunger relief programs across the country. The $50,000 prize for St. George will be used to feed the hungry in Southern Utah.
This is particularly important now. The difficult economy and the area’s relatively high unemployment rate compared to the state and nation mean it’s difficult for many families to put food on the table.
Through this grant, more people will receive the assistance they need to keep themselves and their children healthy.
Read more at the Spectrum
May 2nd, 2012
The City of Parkersburg will receive a $50,000 grant through Wal-Mart’s Fight Hunger Together Facebook campaign. Voters flocked to Facebook during the month of April to vote for their city of choice, out of the top 200 cities in the nation with the highest unemployment rates, identified by the U.S. Department of Labor. The Parkersburg/ Vienna metropolitan area received around 7,000 votes and took ninth place in the top 20 finalists. “I’m ecstatic. Our community really came together to show their support,” said Kevin Ohse, manager of Wal-Mart in Parkersburg. “This money will do a lot of good.”
Read more at Parkersburg News and Sentinel
