412,170 meals provided so far… and counting!

After five days on the road since the start of MINI TAKES THE STATES 2018, sufficient funds have already been raised by those taking part in the “Rally to the Rockies” to pay for over 400,000 meals for people in America with food insecurity.

MINI USA has again chosen Feeding America, the nation’s largest hunger-relief organization dedicated to fighting domestic hunger through a network of food banks, as the Official Charity Partner of MTTS 2018. Two years ago, over 1.3 million meals were provided to families in need as a result of the generosity of the MINI Takes the States family.

The aim this year is to raise enough to provide two million meals to some of the one in six people in America who don’t know where their next meal is coming from.

A small army of dedicated fund raisers and volunteers have teamed up during the course of the epic motoring adventure working hard to help MINI USA reach that ambitious total. They range from individual motorers and organised groups of dedicated fund-raisers to the many Feeding America volunteers that have turned out to meet the rally at the daily ‘Rise and Rally’ gatherings in cities along the route.

People such as Lea-Ann Weisbruck, and her friend Karen Spalding, from Texas, who are holding a rolling boot sale from the back of Lea-Ann’s 2009 MINI Clubman. They are members of theMINIskirts.com, a group who all drive MINIs and are who are dedicated to raising money for various good causes.

They are selling patches, pens, pins and badges from the back of their Clubman at the stopover points on the MTTS 2018 western route from Portland to Keystone.

Lea-Ann and Karen left their home city of Dallas on June 28th to drive to the west coast start point in Oregon. Driving long distances in a MINI is nothing new to the pair. Lea-Ann’s Clubman has covered 180,000 miles since new, while Karen’s 2003 R53 model has accumulated over 300,000 miles on the road.

• At the early morning Rise and Rally event in Pasadena, California, on day four of MTTS 2018, participants heard that one million people suffer food insecurity in the Los Angeles area and the local Feeding America group currently serves over 300,000 people per month.