Investing in the Future
 uch of our community involvement is in the field of education. We believe that young people represent the future of our community and that everyone can play a part in helping them become productive citizens. We believe that businesses nationwide should become involved in the education efforts of their communities. We’re involved in many ways, including:
Junior Achievement
Partners in Education
Engineers’ Week
Other education efforts
Junior Achievement
Collegedale
McKee Foods supports local Junior Achievement efforts through funding. We also provide 20 to 25 volunteer business consultants for J.A. classes in several schools near our corporate headquarters. These employees bring their real-world experience to children in grades K through 6 with age-appropriate materials to guide class discussion regarding the free enterprise system and its rewards.
Junior Achievement Web site
Partners in Education
Collegedale
We have been involved in the Partners in Education program since 1982 when we began an Adopt-A-School partnership with a Chattanooga elementary school. We now partner with two schools close to our plant. Employees are encouraged to participate as tutors, mentors and friends. McKee Foods is also active at the state level in the Tennessee Association of Partners in Education.
National Association of Partners in Education website
Gentry
For 10 years, the Gentry Plant has sponsored Northside Elementary School in Siloam Springs as an “adopted” school. Some of the support is financial; we help purchase computers and other educational items. We also donate no-longer-useful office items and supplies. Of course, snacks are welcome at least four times a year.
Last year we partnered with Volunteers in Parents to the Schools (VIPS) to purchase 25 computers for a lab for kindergarten and first grades at the school. This year’s partnership project is the purchase of specialized software for remedial reading.
Engineers’ Week
Collegedale
McKee Foods engineers participate in Engineers’ Week every February by going to local schools to help interest students in math, science, and engineering careers. Electricity, water, motion, mechanics, physics, etc., are illustrated in child-friendly exhibits and demonstrations.
Stuarts Draft
During Engineers’ Week, the sons and daughters of Stuarts Draft plant engineers come for a tour of the areas where their parents work and go on a tour of the plant. The children, who alternate boys one year and girls the next, are given identification badges and the distinction of being “junior engineers” for the day.
Other education efforts
Collegedale
We have recently started a tour for local high school seniors. In addition to a tour of one of our plants, the students visit an engineering area or machine shop. They receive information about potential jobs, including semi-skilled and skilled technical positions.
 Each semester we send employees to a local high school to help with the Reality Check program sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce. The goal is to help high school students see the financial benefits of staying in school. They learn budgeting skills, since they’re given a job title and a set of circumstances (e.g., married, two children, wife employed) and a monthly income from which they must budget for a car, housing, food, clothing, day care and other essentials.
Gentry
Gentry is also involved in career fairs at universities and technical schools in the northwest Arkansas and northeast Oklahoma areas.
This year Human Resources personnel prescreened a group of Gentry High School students who were not college bound. The students came to the plant for a mini-job fair complete with a benefits session and a plant tour. Those who were interested in applying for a job took a dexterity test.
The Gentry Plant supplied cakes for after-school tutoring sessions at the local Boys and Girls Club, which provides services to more than 100 students a day.
A charitable donation to the Gentry Head Start program provided Christmas gifts for all 25 children in the program. Each child also received a carton of snack cakes.
Stuarts Draft
The Stuarts Draft Plant is active in career fairs including a career day at Blue Ridge Community College. Their booth provides information about the company, and two employees give a presentation on resume tips.
Employees are also active with school presentations. One of the most interesting teaches the children about the assembly-line process. By being part of an assembly line, students learn about economics, production, and consumers. The students can also be counted on to come up with some process improvements along the way.
The company donated funds to help with the rebuilding of the Stuarts Draft High School field house, which had been destroyed in a fire two years earlier.
 A nearby Boys and Girls Club supports more than 100 children in an after-school program each day.
Around Christmas 2004, employees at the Stuarts Draft Plant donated toys that were presented to the children at a catered party. The toys were primarily educational items — board games and educational equipment. The toys were left at the center
so all of the children could use them.
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