Packaging 1,200 Meals To Donate This Holiday Season
This year Sugarbush has collaborated with National Life Group in donating Thanksgiving meals across central Vermont. Employees across the resort volunteered their time to package up meals put together by our Food and Beverage team, spearheaded by Vice President of Food and Beverage, Keith Paxman. With pounds of turkey, stuffing, and all the trimmings piled high, our team was able to produce 1,200 meals to donate alongside National Life Group. Their organization is in their 4th year of donating Thanksgiving meals to central Vermont neighbors. With long-standing partner, Sodexo, they typically provide 500 meals each year to donate. We are proud to contribute to such a meaningful cause and to help them reach a record number of 1,700 meals!
Community Efforts
Undertakings like this are not possible without the help of the community. The many volunteers and community members who helped to coordinate, package meals, deliver, and more, are who make these projects a reality. New this year, the meals will be distributed via key organizations including Elevate Youth Services, Good Samaritan Haven, Montpelier Senior Activity Center, North Barre Manor, Just Basics and the local Salvation Army. And thanks to all of those, hunger this Thanksgiving, will not be a concern for fellow Vermonters in need.
Food insecurity is one of those silent struggles that affect many Vermonters. This is a great opportunity for Sugarbush and our Be Better Here Fund to collaborate with National Life Group and provide nutritious meals to our neighbors in need during the holidays.
-Keith Paxman, Sugarbush Resort’s Vice President of Food and Beverage
About the Be Better Here Fund
At Sugarbush, we are always working to embody our motto of Be Better Here. It’s an aspirational declaration that challenges all of us, from guest to employee to partner, to do good, look for new ways to improve ourselves, and enhance our Sugarbush community. While that goal permeates everything we do here, we specifically focus on three areas in this regard: Community, People, and Sustainability. We strive to enact positive change to community well-being both in the local community and the ski industry as a whole. The Be Better Here Fund was put into place as a means of supporting these communities through a variety of philanthropic initiatives. Through the Be Better Here Fund, the resort focuses on providing financial and charitable support to key nonprofit partner organizations, schools, and other fundraising events. During our 2023/24 fiscal year, we donated over $2 million in cash and in-kind donations.
About National Life Group
At National Life Group, we are a mission-driven and purposed-filled business. For us, the cause of what we do is as important as the products we sell. And our cause is a very simple one, directed at the people who live and work on America’s Main Streets: To Do good in our communities and with the individual families we serve. For 175 years, we have aimed to keep our promises to provide families stability in good times and in bad. And throughout that history, we have provided peace of mind to those families as they plan their futures.
There is no better time than the Thanksgiving season to help feed our at-risk neighbors, fighting hunger is a corporate cause and one way that we live our values of Do good, Be good and Make good.
-National Life Group Chairman, CEO and President Mehran Assadi
