Lambda Chi helps food bank

Members of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity took part in the seventh-annual North American Food Drive this weekend and raised approximately 6,250 pounds of food to donate to the Greater Philadelphia Food Bank, the primary provider of donated food for agencies that serve the needy in the Philadelphia area. The Penn chapter has participated in the North American Food Drive, an international fraternity philanthropy, for the last three years. On Thursday night and Saturday afternoon, 12 of the fraternity's 25 brothers went door-to-door through several of the college houses to ask for donations of canned food and change. Lambda Chi Alpha Vice President Matt Mongon, a Wharton junior, said he was impressed with students' generosity and willingness to help. "There were some people who dropped five to 10 bucks and all we were asking for was loose change," Mongon said. Every $1 is equivalent to nearly eight pounds of food and the members of the fraternity collected about 200 pounds of actual food. Mongon said the brothers' goal was to beat last year's total of approximately 6,500 pounds. He said he attributes this year's drop to scheduling problems, as the event was originally scheduled for October, but the date coincided with Family Weekend. Mongon added that there were $50 to $70 in corporate donations that the fraternity garnered last year and not this year. "But as far as door-to-door collection goes, we did better this year," Mongon said. Jason Pearce, director of communications at the national office of Lambda Chi Alpha, said the 190 participating chapters together have already exceeded the goal of two million pounds of food. And about 25 chapters have not yet reported their collections. Over the past six years, all of the chapters of the fraternity together have gathered 5.1 million pounds of food. "With [5.1 million pounds] we could feed all [180,000] living Lambda Chi Alpha members three meals per day for an entire week," Pearce said. "Or we could feed all the citizens of Dallas, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Atlanta and Richmond, Va., in one day." According to Pearce, the food drive began in the early 1980s at a local level within individual Lambda Chi Alpha chapters. "We've taken what many of our chapters were already doing and made a one-day event with a bigger impact," Pearce said.