SUMMER IS LONG WHEN YOU’RE HUNGRY.

At Kids’ Meals, our main focus is on preschool-aged children (ages 5 and under) who do not have access to free school meal programs. In the summer, when school is out, we feed ALL the school-aged siblings in the home. This causes our summer numbers to go up drastically. This year, we project to deliver approximately 520,000 free, healthy meals to the doorsteps of Houston’s hungriest children between June 1 – August 31. During the summer, teams from across the Houston area compete to help collect the 520,000 juice boxes (100% juice) that are needed to fill this many meals.

The 2021 Summer Juice Box Challenge raised 143,921 Juice Boxes!!!

The 2021 Summer Juice Box Challenge CHAMPION is…

Congratulations to the team from Crest Management Company! With a total of 25,520 juice boxes, Crest has been named the official 2021 Kids’ Meals Summer Juice Box Challenge Champion! They will be presented with the official Juice Box Challenge Champion trophy courtesy of Crown Trophy.

Additional 2021 Juice Box Challenge Winners:

Second Place

The Cheniere CAPS team came in 2nd place, raising a total of 16,784 juice boxes!

Third Place

The Halliburton team came in third place, raising a total of 13,784 j juice boxes!

Best in Show

The Title Houston Holdings team raised 7,878 juice boxes and wins the award for “Best in Show”! Their President, Frank Vandiver, arrived at Kids’ Meals dressed as a Juice Box complete with a 100% fruit hat. This was such a fun delivery!

Most Vocal

The “Most Vocal” award is given to the team that best uses their platform to advocate for the fight against childhood hunger. This year, the award goes to the Jackson Bigby Legacy fund. Jackson loved kids, and in his honor The Jackson Bigby Legacy Fund supports Kids’ Meals. This year their team raised 3,392 juice boxes and helped spread awareness about the impacts of childhood hunger in Houston.

Thank you to the teams that participated in the 2021 Summer Juice Box Challenge!

Joining the Summer Juice Box Challenge is tons of fun, and it’s easy. Ready to compete? Follow these simple steps:

PUT TOGETHER YOUR TEAM

We have all kinds of different teams compete in the Summer Juice box Challenge! Have your entire company compete together, divide up branches or divisions for some friendly “inter-office” competition, collect as a Church, grab some friends, compete with your exercise group, the possibilities are endless. No group is too big or too small to join the Juice box Challenge. Once you put a team together, email chris@kidsmealsinc.org to let us know that you are participating.

SET UP YOUR VIRTUAL DRIVE

Collecting Juice Boxes is easy through the You Give Goods platform. The juice box options are all approved, your team’s page can be shared with friends, family, and co-workers, people can donate from any location, and You Give Goods will ship all the juice boxes your team collected directly to us. To set up your team’s page, click here. Even if your team is planning to collect juice boxes in-person, we still encourage you to set up a You Give Goods page so even more people can participate.

PROMOTE YOUR DRIVE

Hang fliers around the office, send out Company emails, share the link to your You Give Goods drive on your social media accounts, and use whatever other creative ideas you come up with to make your drive as successful as possible. You can track the progress of other teams here. As you let others know your progress compared to other teams, FRIENDLY trash talk is definitely encouraged. You can download the 2021 flyer here.

START COLLECTING

If you are collecting all of your juice boxes virtually, this part is really easy. Check your YOU GIVE GOODS page periodically to track your team’s donations. If you are collecting juice boxes in person, designate a drop-off location (make it look fun if you’d like) and keep count as your juice boxes come in.

DROP OFF

Schedule a time to drop off the juice boxes you collected. If you are collecting on YOU GIVE GOODS, there’s no need to set this up, they will ship the juice boxes directly to us. Make sure that you email chris@kidsmealsinc.org the day and time you are planning to drop off your items. This way we can make sure your totals get added correctly AND we want to get pictures. Many teams like to set up a fun and creative drop off in order to compete for the “Best in Show” prize. Drop off times are Monday-Friday between 9am-2pm.

COMPETE AND WIN

Everyone is a winner when they come together to fight against childhood hunger, but there can be only ONE Juice Box Champion. The awards you are competing for are:

Juice Box Champion: The team that has collected the most juice boxes by the August 31 deadline

Best in Show: The group that makes the best presentation upon delivery (costumes, music, posters, etc…)

Most Vocal: The team with the best social media presence throughout the competition.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

1. Does it matter what flavor/brand of juice boxes we collect? – Nope! We just require that all juice boxes are 100% juice.

2. Can we run our team’s juice box challenge for only a portion of the summer? – Absolutely! We have teams that start and stop their competition at all sorts of times during the June 1 – August 31 timeline.

3. We are collecting our juice boxes through You Give Goods, but we want to compete for Best In Show. Can we have the juice boxes delivered to our location so that we can deliver them? – Yes! If you would like to set this up, email our You Give Goods representative Michelle at michelle.seideneck@yougivegoods.com – Make sure to let Michelle know you would like to do this at the beginning as You Give Goods sends us juice boxes throughout the competition rather than sending them all at the end.

4. We collected a LOT of juice boxes in person and do not have a way to deliver them all. Can Kids’ Meals come pick them up? – Kids’ Meals is happy to pick up juice box donations that are more than 2,000 boxes. We do have a few requirements as our staff and truck availability is limited.

• We need at least a one week notice prior to picking up the juice boxes.
• We ask that you be flexible with our schedule. Our vans and trucks are used throughout the day to deliver meals to hungry children and to pick up food donations. Therefore, we only have certain pickup days/times available.
• Juice boxes should be placed in one central location
• We ask that your group provide volunteers to help our driver load the juice boxes into the truck

Don’t see your question here? Email chris@kidsmealsinc.org