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This past Sunday local band, Blue Weekend played a benefit show for Grind Out Hunger at the Santa Cruz Skate and Surf Shop. The show began at about 7pm and the played a 45 minute set. They played a bunch of original songs as well as covers by bands such as Green Day and Social Distortion. Kids came to listen, skate LOT F, hang out…people were playing ping-pong, pool, foosball and just relaxing on a Sunday evening all in support of Grind Out Hunger and the youth of Santa Cruz County. With the combo of cash and canned food donations the total came out to just over 300 pounds of food!
After the show the band approached us and asked when they could do this again…another show featuring Blue Weekend is in the works. Stay tuned…

Big thanks to the Skate Shop and their staff for hosting the event, thanks to the band for ROCKING, and to everyone that came to support.

Next up, at the Santa Cruz Skate and Surf Shop, we have SPINFARM and Aptos Jr. High’s WHIPLASH playing on Saturday, March 10th.
Look out for details about that show coming very soon.

Thank you to everyone that came to the show on Sunday to support Blue Weekend and Grind Out Hunger. We had a blast and cant wait to do it again!

Enjoy a few photos below…

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We got a call on Wednesday from our good friend, Jason Strubing, owner of SkateWorks asking us if we wanted to do a Skate Jam/demo with him at Google headquarters that Friday. Hmmmm…2 days to get a Skate Jam together? For Grind Out Hunger? And Google!? …BRING IT ON.

We called up a couple of skaters to cruise with us to Google. Santa Cruz Skate Shop team riders, Zane and Marley came along with us representing Grind Out Hunger. We left Santa Cruz at around 8am. Arrived at Google around 9:30, clear skies, perfect weather conditions. It took us a few tries to figure out where we were supposed to go. The Google campus is giant! When we got to our destination we jumped out of the car and went on a hunt to find Google’s indoor half pipe that they had built for their employees. We found it, signed some waivers, and got to skating.

At about 10:15 our Ttruck full of Grind Out Hunger skate ramps showed up! We got down to business and unloaded all of the ramps by 11am, when the event was officially supposed to begin. As we were setting up skating legend, Steve Caballero arrived. Skating opened up to the Google Faculty as well as skaters from Skate Works and our two riders once we were finished setting up the ramps. At around 12:30 Steve Caballero jumped in and skated for a while.

Throughout the event Steve Caballero was signing posters at a table right next to our Grind Out Hunger Table. While people were waiting in line to talk to Steve Cab we informed them about Grind Out Hunger and what it is that we are trying to accomplish. Many of the Google employees were thrilled and donated to the cause. Some bought hats, skate decks, and more…

Overall it was a great event. The Grind Out Hunger team had a BLAST. We were able to provide a fun skate set up for Google as well as get the word out about Grind Out Hunger. About 500 people showed up, skated, ate lunch, and  hung out. We ended up raising about 600 pounds through donations.
We are hoping to have the opportunity to do this for them again…

Who knows whats in store for us next… APPLE?

Enjoy a few photos! Check out more photos on the Grind Out Hunger Facebook Page!

Steve Caballero signing a Grind Out Hunger Deck.

Google...

Zane Keith riding Grind Out Hunger

Steve Caballero Grinding Out Hunger

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SkateJam success? I think so! This past Saturday Whole Foods – Santa Cruz hosted our first SkateJam of the Summer! The setup process started early that morning; Grind Out Hunger founder, Danny Keith, his sidekick, Shawn Hatjes, and Dominic Cusimano of 3D Construction all gathered at Starbucks in Aptos at 6am. They sat down, sipped on some strong coffee and planned out the course of the day.
We packed up some ramps in a Second Harvest Food Bank Truck and met Arenas Towing later to load the rest. We arrived at Whole Foods – Santa Cruz around 8:30am and immediately started the unloading process. We set up the ramps in a layout that kids would love.

When noon rolled around families, friends, and supporters began to arrive to skate, eat, watch, and enjoy a sunny Summer afternoon. Whole Foods provided drinks, pizza, and of course a large section of their parking lot! Big thanks to the Whole Foods Marketing team for organizing this event and providing food!

The event raised a cash equivalent of 500 Pounds at the event, which was matched by an anonymous donation, totaling the amount raised to 1000 Pounds!

Oh and did we mention that the media came out to cover the event too!?! Santa Cruz Sentinel and KSBW 8 News both stopped by.

Check out the Santa Cruz Sentinel Article about the event: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_18355988

KSBW 8 News came out and filmed/aired a short spot of the event on that evening’s news. Pretty sweet!

Next up is the Luau that Whole Foods – Capitola is putting on at their store. Friday, July 1st from 5-8pm. 50% of the proceeds benefit Grind Out Hunger. Bring the Family! See you there!
More info HERE.

Photos by: Shawn Hatjes

Thanks Whole Foods for hosting the event!

Nate Linford

Griffith Stark

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It’s summer! The sun is shining, which means it’s time for you all to get your skate on! On June 25th from 12-4pm Whole Foods Market – Santa Cruz and Grind Out Hunger are teaming up to present the first Grind Out Hunger Skate Jam of the summer! Bring family, bring friends and come spend the day with us! Whether you are skateboarding or not this event will be a blast!
See you all on Saturday the 25th!

Here’s the info:

Skate Jam!

Whole Foods – Santa Cruz
911 Soquel Ave Santa Cruz, CA

12-4pm

$5 or 5 Pounds of food to skate ALL DAY

FAMILY EVENT!
ALL AGES

Check Out the Santa Cruz Patch event HERE.
RSVP to the Facebook Event HERE

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Grind Out Hunger is all about feeding children through skateboarding. So when Consuelo Anthony of C3TV Skateboard Radio sent me a Tweet about endorsing a skate event in Georgia with proceeds going to feed children I was all over it. With over 1.5 million listeners worldwide, C3TV Skateboard Radio has now began what Grind Out Hunger has needed…a voice! Consuelo and her crew are truly angels as I urge you to listen and support this awesome Radio Channel.  Lets get Grind Out Hunger widespread so the skateboarders of the world can help end childhood hunger! Today’s Grind Out Hunger food drive will go down Saturday June 26th from 2pm to 6pm EST at North Georgia Skateboard Center, Tunnel Hill Georgia with prizes donated from ERGO and Santa Cruz Skate Shop. Make sure to listen up LIVE or go to the site C3TV Skateboard Radio to hear Grind Out Hunger call in and discuss feeding children through skateboarding Saturday 9:15am EST. This should be a good time, thanks to C3TV Skateboarding Radio and especially Consuelo Anthony! Please check out these Georgia Foodbanks and support them there is over 1.8 million children going food insecure right now in 29 counties in Georgia!!!

C3TVRadio Skateboard Radio hosts Grind Out Hunger event in Atlanta

Josh Copeland, Nick Copeland and Zach Copeland of C3TV Skateboard Radio

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Santa Cruzan Danny Keith and his Bold Mission to Combat Hunger

Some would say he’s “very Santa Cruz.” But he’s also very cool and boy, is he eager to get kids to know about hunger — and how they can combat it.

Meet Danny Keith, a Northern California guy hungry to make a change.

Keith, who lives and breathes the surf and skate culture in Santa Cruz, California, has been at the helm of Santa Cruz Skate and Surf Shop since the early ’90s. In fact, he’s created a wildly inventive setting in his fascinating little lair. A pool table, some video games and a TV lounge compete with the other eye candy in the shop — all that skate and surf paraphernalia. Think of it as post-modern after-school club for today’s youth.

But beyond that arena, Keith’s been happily riding another successful wave. It’s a philanthropic one dubbed Grind Out Hunger, which the 40-year-old launched back in 2004 after teaming with Santa Cruz’s Second Harvest Food Bank. The idea was to speak to kids at local schools and “encourage youth in helping peers” with the issue of hunger.

How Keith arrived at that point is interesting to chronicle. After receiving several food barrels from Second Harvest, he noticed that the barrels weren’t being filled up.

“We came to realize that moms weren’t traveling around with five pounds of food they can donate when their kids wanted to buy a skateboard,” Keith tells me. “Typically there would be 20 to 30 kids hanging out, playing pool, playing video games [in the shop] — they’re not walking around with cans of food in their pocket. So, I thought, if I can’t get them to bring in the food, then I’ll bring it to them.”

In a stellar move, Keith decided to hit local elementary, middle and high schools during their traditional holiday food drives. An easy thing to do would have been to simply drop off some food barrels, but Keith went one step further. He decided to actually talk to the students himself. And so, in a series of spirited discussions during assemblies, he began educating students about the importance of thwarting hunger in Santa Cruz County.

“I also wanted to create incentives for schools to raise the most pounds per student,” Keith adds. “I wanted to reward that [winning] school with a gift certificate, which they could give to winning students however they saw fit.”

In the beginning, the idea sparked the interests of smaller niches — the AP Club, the school band and the like.

“Only about five percent of the school was involved and I saw that there needed to be a wide-spread peer pressure effect,” Keith says. So he tossed in a prize of $600. Instantly, student interest surpassed just the AP club, to include the entire school.

Over the course of five years, Keith’s motivational work with students and their posses has lured in hundreds of thousands of pounds of food. Last year’s total: 100,000 pounds, more than double the amount at the beginning of the mission.

But you’d really have to witness the Keith’s amazing vigor in person to know just how infectious his personality is. His look is modern skate-surf. He appears carefree in sneakers but is insanely focused, creative and passionate about giving back — his shoulder-length brown hair, for instance, is about to be chopped off for Locks of Love, which provides real-hair wigs for those suffering from cancer. He now boasts more than 20 speaking engagements a year at local schools. Last year, he nabbed the Generation Next Award from Second Harvest.

Asked why he’s so passionate about combating hunger, Keith sighs deeply and says that it has a great deal to with kids and the elderly.

“They are the two groups of people that really can’t really make a change happen [in regards to not having food],” he says. “I think there is a misnomer of who gets fed by food banks. A lot of people think it’s mainly going to homeless shelters and people not pulling their weight, and that’s not really the case. Second Harvest services forty-thousand-plus people a month. Half of those are kids!

“And it’s not like going to Safeway Foods where you can pick out the food you want,” he adds. “You go there and you are handed a bag. It’s a very humbling experience. For me, I never went hungry growing up, but we were strapped as a family. Both my parents were injured and there were times when we’d eat a lot of hot dogs and beans — whatever, we were still eating, but I thoroughly believe that if we fed people and educated them, we’d have a better society and spend less money incarcerating people and trying to rehabilitate them.”

Keith is a Salinas native who fell in love with surfing at an early age. He relocated to Santa Cruz in his late teens, now has three children, 18, 16 and an 18-month old. He believes in “paying it forward” because “you never know where you are going to be.”

Up next for this hunger fighter: An inventive re-teaming with Second Harvest on “packaging” the model he uses when speaking to kids, which would allow other food banks to utilize his program through media kits and DVDs. He also sees the importance of being a social networking titan.

Other than his ties at Santa Cruz Skate and Surf, he oversees other enterprises, such as skateboards.com, surfboards.com and snowboards.com. He’s also a morning on-air personality (6 to 11 a.m.) on KDON’s rambunctious “Morning Madhouse” — you can often spot the man at a bevy of local events the station covers, too.

All this exposure, Keith notes, only helps him get the word out about hunger issues in the 831.
“There’s no reason anybody in this country should go hungry — period!”

Learn more about Danny Keith and Grind Out Hunger at www.grindouthunger.org. Visit Santa Cruz Skate and Surf Shop at www.facebook.com/santacruzskateandsurf. Watch live skateboards.com shows at noon, Friday at www.justin.tv/skateboards.

Watch the video (below) of the First Annual Nexties, of which Keith was a recipient, at a recent awards ceremony sponsored by local giant Santa Cruz Next.

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All I can say about today is wow…the momentum that Grind Out Hunger has and the support from Second Harvest Food Bank with branded donation barrel wraps, DVD story, small handout bags for the schools and a sign up sheet for Grind Out Hunger is quite overwhelming.  Second Harvest Food Bank has its annual Holiday Food Drive Kickoff Luncheon every year (I said annual right..) and for the last couple of years I have had the opportunity to speak to the group about the past achievements, current goals and overall update for Grind Out Hunger.  This year’s Holiday Food Drive Co-Chairs Bruce & Mary McPherson and Sandi Eason are setting the challenge for you to get involved in the largest food drive of the year!  Grind Out Hunger’s goal is 100,000 pounds of food to be raised through local elementary, middle and high schools while overall Second Harvest Food Bank’s goal is 2 million pounds!!! It was awesome to feel the love today and know that there are great people involved to help put food on peoples tables this holiday season.

Grind Out Hunger bags distributed to all the local schools

Grind Out Hunger's DK

Bruce McPherson Holiday Co-Chair

Sandi Eason Holiday Co-Chair

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:                                Lisa Allyn, Development Director

Telephone Number: w: 831-722-7110 ext 217

Email Address: lisa@thefoodbank.org

Web site addresses: www.thefoodbank.org and www.grindouthunger.org

Word Count: 358 

Grind Out Hunger Campaign Begins

Local Schools Target Goal of 100,000 Pounds of Food

Santa Cruz—News of the economic crisis can be dispiriting. The Food Research and Action Center recently reported that 18.5% of California’s children live in poverty. We know that 1 in 4 kids in Santa Cruz County have experienced hunger in the last year. In spite of this, our community has a great opportunity to fight these grim statistics. Local schools, Santa Cruz Skate Shop and Second Harvest Food Bank are collaborating to combat childhood hunger this year with the Grind Out Hunger campaign.

Over the past four years, kids of all ages have contributed over 220,000 pounds of food for their peers in need as part of Grind Out Hunger. This year, Santa Cruz Skate Shop owner Danny Keith is challenging schools to bring in at least 100,000 pounds. He will travel all over the county in the coming weeks to talk about how local kids can help each other to get the nourishment they need to grow and learn. He will also be talking about prizes.

“We’ll be awarding the schools who give the most food with gift certificates to Santa Cruz Skate Shop. Last year we gave away $1,200 in merchandise of the winners’ choices, and we’ll do the same again this year,” said Danny Keith.

“We’re very excited to be working with Danny again this year,” said Second Harvest Development Director Lisa Allyn. “It’s so wonderful for students to be able to help their peers in such a direct way while working towards a goal.” Allyn added that the food drive will last from October 5-November 20. Students can fill barrels at their schools with non-perishable items such as cereal, canned items, and dry goods. They may also donate cash. “We can make cash donations go pretty far, so each $1 that a school donates will be equivalent to 3 pounds of food,” said Allyn.

To learn more about the Grind Out Hunger food drive, contact Bly Morales at (831) 722-7110 x 226 or bly@thefoodbank.org or go to www.grindouthunger.org. You can view a video about Grind Out Hunger at www.thefoodbank.org.