Minnesota bloggers give back

Last night, 40 bloggers from all walks of life in the snowy state of Minnesota dedicated a few hours of time to enjoy each other's company and give of ourselves for a good cause. Based on all the smiles and hugs, and yes, even a few tears, I think it's pretty safe to say the 1st Minnesota Blogger Volunteer Event was a wonderful success.

As bloggers, we give of ourselves online. We connect online. We support each other online. It was great to see a group of fabulous tech-savvy peeps hop off the grid for a few hours and get to know each other in person. Although I was lucky enough to already know a handful of people personally, many people showed up without knowing a soul! We started the evening with dinner at Houlihans where people mingled and chatted endlessly about blogging. If we didn't have any place to go, I bet we could have stayed a few more hours. The room was buzzing! Somewhere along the line, I stood on a chair and gave a little speech and toasted the group.

I was having camera difficulties and didn't take pics of the networking event, but I know many others did and I look forward to seeing them. (There is a spot at the end of this post for everyone to link up their own blog posts to share, so check them out.) Before we left each blogger was treated to special gifts from Annie's Homegrown - Natural and Organic Foods, and Red Gold Tomatoes. These companies contacted me before the event and asked to send product samples as a way to show their support for what we were doing. The bloggers loved them! Check out this pic of Jen from Prior Fat Girl with her swag! Thank you Annie's and Red Gold!

I'd also like to thank some special bloggers for showing up early to help get things ready: Darcie, Kellyn, Liz, Kim and Suzie and Robin. I couldn't have done it without you!

After some good food and fun conversation, we all headed over to Feed My Starving Children to volunteer our time to pack meals for hungry children. At this point I decided to pull out my cell phone camera (better low quality than nothing...) and take some pics. The blogger in me couldn't resist!

If you haven't been to Feed My Starving Children to volunteer, I highly recommend it. You spend about 30 minutes in orientation and then pack foods or other assembly line activities for about an hour. They play upbeat music and volunteers seem to be laughing and having a great time. At least the bloggers were!

One of the amazing things about Feed My Starving Children is how they are able to provide meals for people for only .17 cents. Each child receives one cup per day, and that one cup is literally lifesaving for these children.

During orientation we learned about the organization and the impact of our time on hungry people around the world. Rockin' the hair nets are Lenore from Mom Culture, and Kay and May from the Star Tribune's Cribsheet.

Putting ingredient labels on the bags the food gets packaged in are: Suzi from Pink Vanilla Cupcakes, Amelia Sprout, Tikki from Multicultural Minneapolis, and Kate-Madonna from Girl Meets Geek.

Assembling meals are Kristina from The Joy Walk, Kate from Kate in the Kitchen, Julie from The Veritable Fount, Carrie from 4 the Love of Family, Liz from Random Thoughts of a Lutheran Geek, and Kristi from Ticket King Theatre.

Sampling the food we prepared at the closing, Kara from the Star Tribune's Ka-Blog and Darcie from Gust Gab. Our group filled about half of the volunteer spots that night. With all the volunteers working together, we managed to package 13,824 meals in about an hour. That's enough to feed 38 kids a meal a day for a year. Amazing.

Oh, and did you see us on the evening news? That's right, the cool peeps over at Fox9 showed footage of us volunteering on the 10 p.m. news! Our blogger/volunteer Trish from Off-Camera with Trish happens to know a few people at Fox (yeah, she's a reporter) and told them what we were doing. Thanks, Trish, for helping give bloggers a good name! :)

And to all the amazing bloggers who gave so freely of themselves last night, thank you. From the bottom of my heart. It was an honor to serve with you.

If you were there and blogged about it, please add your link to the auto-link tool below so we can check it out. Thanks! :)

The Fine Print: I received free samples from the food companies mentioned above, Annies and Red Gold Tomatoes. I was not paid to mention them. We all paid for our own meals at the restaurant. This event was totally about giving back and the free stuff was just icing on the cake.